Strawberry diseases: types of diseases with a description

Strawberries are a fairly popular plant among summer residents. There are a huge number of varieties, hybrids. They are all different, have their own requirements for conditions and care. But as for the strawberry disease that this crop is exposed to, they are the same for all varieties and species. Stronger and most often garden strawberries are affected by diseases of fungal origin. The risk of such problems increases if it rains on the street, or the weather is constantly cloudy. Lower temperatures have a bad effect on the development of strawberries. Many gardeners believe that the fungal disease affects only the green part of the strawberry bushes. But it is not so. Such diseases are dangerous in that they can harm the root system, as well as the fruits themselves.

Major diseases of strawberries

Most often, strawberry diseases are observed as follows:

- various rot (root, black, gray, white, late blight)

- powdery mildew

- fusarium, due to which the bushes wilt

- various spotting (black, brown, white)

Let's consider strawberry diseases in more detail.

Strawberry diseases: white strawberry rot

This disease appears, as a rule, due to the fact that the plants do not receive the proper amount of sunlight. Another cause of white rot is often high humidity levels. It is not so difficult to determine that the bushes are infected with this particular disease. If you see large spots of white color on strawberry leaves, then you can hardly doubt that it was white rot.

After the leaves are affected, the rot goes directly to the fruits themselves, and then the berries turn white, and a fungus is visible from above. You cannot eat such berries.

Also, white rot can occur when the planting is too thickened, as well as if the rules for care are not followed.

Of course, it is better to prevent such a problem than to deal with the treatment of your plantings later. So, so that white strawberry rot does not appear, there are some recommendations:

- When planting strawberries, give preference to an area with a lot of sun, it is better if it is a hill.

- Carefully inspect the planting material before purchasing. There should be no signs of disease on the seedlings.

- In time you need to weed your plantings from weeds. It creates unnecessary shading and thickening of your plantings.

If preventive measures did not help you, then you will have to treat white rot. At the same time, experienced gardeners most often use fungicides, for example, drugs such as Horus and Svitich give good results.

Strawberry diseases: gray rot

This disease is a very frequent visitor to many strawberry plantings. This concerns, by the way, both ordinary strawberries and remontant varieties. This disease occurs most often due to a too warm climate with high levels of humidity. Such conditions are a frequent occurrence in greenhouses, as well as in summer in many regions of Russia.

By the way, in addition to external climatic conditions, we add that this culture, as a rule, is rarely transplanted and grows in the same place for a long time. This suggests that about sixty percent of the plantings can be infected.

How to distinguish gray rot?

- Strawberries are brown and hard to the touch.Later, they become covered with a gray coating.

- Berries that have been affected by gray rot begin to shrivel and dry out.

- Over time, a spot of brown and gray shade is "thrown" to the surface of the leaves of the bushes.

A little about how to prevent this problem:

- Periodically remove weeds from the area.

- Mulch the soil with lime or ash.

- During the period when the strawberries are blooming or before flowering, treat your strawberries with Bordeaux liquid. Also, the Barrier preparation is suitable for these purposes.

- In autumn, when the harvest has already been harvested, wait until the rudiments of new foliage appear, and then remove all the old leaves.

- Alternating rows with strawberries and other crops can serve as a good prevention. Garlic or onions are ideal for these purposes.

- Use pine needles or straw mulch on your beds.

- If you find signs of damage to a particular part of the plant, immediately remove it, be it flowers, fruits or leaves.

- Don't forget to harvest. This should be done as often and on a regular basis.

Please note that no matter how hard you try to follow all of the above rules, if your strawberries have been growing in the same garden for more than three to four years, then all this will be useless.

It should also be noted that if strawberry flower stalks are located above the foliage stalks, then the risk of catching a disease is lower. This is due to the fact that the bush itself and the fruits grow apart from the ground.

Black rot of strawberry roots

This is a rather dangerous disease for strawberry plantings. Black rot appears, as a rule, on young roots. Outwardly, these are small black spots. They get bigger over time. The next step is that the entire bush (from the root system to the rosette) acquires a brown color. At the same time, the roots become more brittle, lifeless. For these reasons, the level of yield drops dramatically. Garden strawberries have almost literally no healthy parts. The bush becomes completely infected.

This type of root rot can come at any time of the season, and it stops either with the death of the plant or with the onset of low temperatures.

Root rot, unfortunately, cannot be treated. If your strawberry bushes have undergone such a misfortune, then the best solution would be to completely remove them from the garden as soon as possible and burn them. After that, treat the soil with disinfectants.

Root rot prevention is as follows:

- Feed your strawberry bushes exclusively with compost that is completely overcooked. This is due to the fact that a certain amount of dangerous viruses and bacteria may remain in the not rotted top dressing.

- In spring, when the snow has already melted, you need to process your garden with fungicides.

- Before laying the covering material on your strawberry plantings, treat them with Phytodoctor or any other similar means.

- When choosing an area for planting strawberries, give preference to areas with a good level of illumination. The soil should not be wet.

- Do not plant your strawberries in areas where potatoes were previously grown.

Strawberry black fruit rot

This disease can also quite often appear on strawberry plantations. As a rule, the causes of black rot are heat and too high humidity levels. An important distinguishing feature of this disease is that the fruits of the plant are covered with spots, while the bushes are not touched.

At first, strawberries take on an expressionless, watery character. There is no rich red color, no taste and aroma. Then the berries acquire a bloom, which has no color as such. But after a while, the plaque turns black.

Strawberry diseases are usually fungal in nature and difficult to get rid of.So it is with black rot. Remove and burn berries as soon as possible.

Observe the following preventive rules:

- Raise your strawberry beds to a certain height (minimum fifteen centimeters, maximum forty centimeters).

- Treat strawberries with a manganese solution. Add a couple of grams of potassium permanganate to one bucket of water. Water your strawberry bushes. It is a good disinfectant.

- Try not to actively use organic fertilizers and fertilizers with nitrogen content as fertilizers.

Strawberry late blight

Almost the most dangerous fungal disease for garden strawberries is late blight rot. This attack is capable of destroying all your landings in the shortest possible time.

This disease spreads to the entire plant, however, the appearance of late blight can be noticed at the very beginning. At this stage, special attention should be paid to the berries themselves. Late blight begins with them. The surface of the berries begins to acquire a denser structure, inside the berry is harsh, bitter in taste. Further, on the fruits, you can find spots of a dark purple color. And after that the berries dry up.

After the fruits are destroyed, late blight is taken for the rest of the strawberries. The next to suffer are the leaves of the plant, as well as the stem of the garden strawberry bush. Very often late blight occurs due to improper irrigation regime. This disease, as well as other diseases of fungal origin, occurs due to too high humidity levels.

Such an infection lingers in the ground for a long time. It also does not disappear from bushes that have been infected. For this reason, it is imperative to follow the basic rules for caring for strawberries, as well as periodically treat both seedlings and the site itself.

There are some rules that can help you avoid late blight rot:

- When harvesting, you need to remove the affected fruits, dry leaves, unnecessary antennae. You need to thin out your plantings to the maximum.

- Be careful with dressings! An excess of fertilizer should not be allowed.

- Do not forget to process the plantings before the bushes go to winter.

- When choosing strawberry varieties, give those that have a high resistance to fungal diseases.

- If you grow strawberries of different varieties, then there must be a distance between them not less than two meters.

- To ensure that the plants have enough oxygen, and the strawberries are ventilated, adhere to the planting scheme thirty by twenty-five centimeters.

- Be sure to transplant your strawberries to another area after three years.

Powdery mildew on strawberries

Like the rest of the above diseases of strawberries, powdery mildew is referred to as fungal diseases. This attack affects the berries and foliage of plants. Powdery mildew can greatly change the level of your crop for the worse, and even kill it altogether.

How to determine that your plantings are sick with powdery mildew? There are several signs by which this disease can be distinguished:

- Leaves on their seamy side are covered with small spots. They are whitish in color, outwardly resembling the surface of the plaque.

- Further, these spots increase in size and become one large spot.

- The foliage of the plant becomes curled, wrinkled. The structure of the sheet becomes denser and coarser.

- The ovaries stop growing, turn brown and fall off.

- If there are fruits on the bush, then they are covered with a white coating. Over time, the berries begin to turn blue and rot.

- The antennae of the plant are also damaged. They turn brown and fall off over time.

In conditions of high air temperature and too high humidity, this disease is gaining momentum very, very quickly.

Preventive measures against powdery mildew:

- Be sure to treat the root system of the planting material with copper sulfate.

- Before the flowering process of the plant, treat it with Topaz.

- Periodically apply mineral fertilizing in the complex on the leaves of garden strawberries.

If powdery mildew cannot be avoided, try to cure it by taking the following measures:

- Leaves of the last year that have been infected must be removed and burned.

- Use soda ash for bushes that were sore last year. It is necessary to spray them periodically with this solution.

- During the formation, filling and ripening of fruits, process them with a solution of cow whey in a ratio of one to ten.

- If the situation worsens, add more iodine to the above solution. A few droplets are sufficient. Treat your plantings every 3 days.

Remember, it is almost impossible to get rid of powdery mildew completely. It is in your power only to help the strawberry plantings not die at all. After 3 years, plant your new planting bushes as far as possible from the infected area, while disinfecting it thoroughly.

Fusarium strawberry

Due to fusarium, the plant begins to wilt rather quickly. This disease often affects not only strawberries, but also other crops. Experienced gardeners consider very high temperatures to be among the main causes of this disease. This also includes too much weed in the garden.

How to determine that strawberries have "caught" Fusarium? Usually, the definition of this disease is not difficult. The bushes turn brown, and then dry out rather quickly. The whole plant is affected and dies. It goes to everyone: leaves, fruits, stems, root system.

Only plants that have only an initial stage of development of fusarium wilting are subject to treatment. In this situation, fungicide products can be used.

It is much easier not to fight an already advanced disease, but to prevent its appearance:

- Carefully look at the quality of the seedlings when buying, they should not have traces of infection with diseases.

- Do not plant strawberry bushes in the area where potatoes were grown.

- Strawberry bushes cannot be planted on the same plot earlier than 4 years later.

- Don't ignore the weeds. It is imperative to remove them on time.

Strawberry diseases: white spot

The occurrence of white spot on strawberry plantings is not at all rare. This is a fairly frequent visitor to the gardeners' beds. A distinctive feature of the appearance of white spot is not white spots. You will recognize it, contrary to its name, by the round dots of reddish and brown colors. The dots are small in size. They appear on the entire surface of the leaves.

Over time, these points become a single large spot. In the middle it is lighter in color, subsequently, holes appear in these places. Due to the attacks of white strawberry spot, half of the green part of the plants can disappear. Needless to say, such losses contribute to a strong decrease in yield levels. Of course, all this also affects the taste of berries not in the best way.

White spot is not treated. Infected plants should be removed from the site as soon as possible. Bushes that have not been infected with this disease must be treated with copper-containing preparations designed to combat fungal diseases.

This disease is extremely dangerous for plants. White Spot Prevention Measures:

- After all of your strawberry harvest has been harvested, apply a top dressing, which contains potassium and phosphorus in its composition. This measure is able to well increase the level of immunity of strawberries.

- Keep under strict control of the fertilization based on organic matter and phosphorus.

- When planting, follow the scheme, there should be a certain distance between the plants.

- Change the mulch layer every spring and remove dry foliage.

- Treat your plantings with Bordeaux fluid three times a season.

- Do not plant strawberries where crops such as cucumber, tomato, potato, corn, eggplant were previously grown.

Strawberry diseases: brown spot

This disease is dangerous because the symptoms are very weak, and the disease itself is rather weak. This is a very insidious property, because with such seemingly insignificant signs, more than half of your plantings can be lost.

The progress of the disease usually begins in the spring. This is usually April. It all starts with the appearance of brown spots. They are not too large in size and appear at the edges of the foliage first. After that, they form one large spot and begin to cover the main part of the sheet.

The outer part of the leaf later becomes covered with black spores that grow right through the leaf. Parts of the strawberry bush, in particular tendrils, ovaries and inflorescences, acquire raspberry-colored spots.

In mid-July, strawberry bushes begin the rejuvenation process. New foliage is forming, you can falsely think that the disease has passed by itself. Not worth it, the disease will arise again, there can be no doubt about it. How to deal with this scourge? There are some measures:

- In early spring and late autumn, you need to remove all affected and dried leaves.

- Lay mulch near your plants. Excess moisture must not be allowed.

- Remove harmful insects that you notice. They carry dangerous infected spores. Especially need to beware of the spider mite.

- To make the immunity of your strawberries better and stronger, periodically make top dressing that contains potassium and phosphorus. It is better to moderate nitrogen fertilizers.

- When you have collected the last berries from your bushes, process them with Fitosporin. It will not be superfluous.

Strawberry anthracnose

Like all the other diseases listed above, anthracnose is also a fungal disease. As a rule, the main development of anthracnose occurs in the spring or June. The conditions for the occurrence of this scourge are usually high air temperatures combined with rainy weather. The carriers of this disease can be: the soles of shoes, garden tools, the seedlings themselves, the soil.

The type of fungus that actually causes anthracnose can get used to the chemistry used. For this reason, use drugs that have different chemical compositions.

At first, the foliage of strawberry plants turns red, after which it cracks and dries up. Shoots along with stems also suffer. Ulcers appear on their surface, which have a center of a light shade and dark edges. Ultimately, the affected stems die, and the bush itself dries up.

As long as the strawberries are red, anthracnose attacks them, and stains of a watery character appear. They become darker over time. Such a berry is absolutely not to be eaten! Berries that have not yet matured are also exposed to anthracnose. Dark depressed spots appear on them. In these places, the fungus remains for the winter.

Anthracnose is very, very difficult to defeat. If you notice signs of the disease at first, then try to treat your plantings with fungicidal preparations. After a while, you need to use Bordeaux fluid. She also carries out preventive treatments for strawberry bushes. This procedure is done three times in one season. It will not be superfluous to add sulfur to the Bordeaux mixture.

In this article, we have listed the most common strawberry diseases. In reality, their number is much higher.But besides this, there is also a whole list of harmful insects, which not only act as carriers of infections, but also feast on strawberries from time to time. So it is imperative to periodically carefully study your plants and, in the presence of the first symptoms of a particular problem, immediately take the necessary measures