Something is eating my strawberries :(

skea56

Had planted about 20 new and old strawberry plants in spring and all seemed to be coming along nicely with small fruits sprouting from most of the plants.

GOt all excited when the first started to redden as I looked forward to a bowl of strawberries and cream for my sunday dinner about 2 weeks ago.

I was disgusted to see out of the 8 or so fruits that were ready, 5 of them were either partially or completely eaten from the inside out and had to be discarded.

This has happened a further 2 times and so out of the 20 or so berries that could have been harvested, I only got 6, and even then they weren't fully red but I wanted to take them before something else ate them!

It appears to be something has laid its eggs in the fruit and ate its way out, but leaves no other trace. I check the patch daily and the other berries do not seem to be touched in any way, however I can be sure that as soon as they start to redden they'll disappear.

Could anyone suggest what could be done to prevent further waste?

Kind Regards

sk56

elisaves

This weather was good for lots of pests. Slugs and snails eat strawberries, also woodlice. Check under the foliage and under the surface see what you can find. Also birds love strawberries too, pigeons, blackbirds, starlings...
Net your berries and spray with garlic spray, it repels slugs or lots of other organic methods =, good articles on seed parade blog... (cannot post links sorry)

[Deleted User]

Certainly woodlice had ours this year, when they have finished fruiting I will put slug pellets down

culpepper

Ants will hollow them out too.
This year some of ours went to the slugs but more to the ants.

blossomhill_2

very small woodlice have hollowed ours

Joyful

I have a raised bed and it is lined. Yesterday after finding more strawberries eaten I found tiny woodlice inside others. Worse was to come when I looked between the liner and the wood. I had thousands of woodlice packed on top of each other.I have sprayed them all with an insect repellent and also over my srawberries ( not to be eaten for 3 days) although I don't expect it to be the end of the problem.

The only thing which has survived in my garden this year are the raspberries which have overtaken the garden. If anyone lives in Edinburgh and wants some feel free to contact me.