Garden strawberries are constantly attacked by sucking and gnawing pests. These are various insects that cause great damage to the plant and reduce yield. Many of them are the most dangerous and difficult to eradicate.
Common strawberry pests and their control
Pest control begins in early spring and continues throughout the season. First of all, after the snow melts, they clean the strawberry plantations from old leaves. Such preventive cleaning can protect plants from insects. Indeed, under the old leaves many pests and their larvae winter. After cleaning, it is recommended to loosen the aisles and remove all weeds, which are also a source of infection. The roots of the plant that are exposed during the procedure must be sprinkled with earth.
An effective method in the fight against pests and larvae is heat treatment, which is carried out in the spring, after cleaning the beds. Hot water, heated to a temperature of 70 degrees, is poured into a watering can and scalded with bushes. For good disinfection and improve the result, you can add manganese or copper sulfate to the water. This procedure helps to get rid of strawberry nematodes and ticks.
Strawberry Nematode
A very dangerous pest of strawberry garden - nematode. This is a small worm that reaches a length of about 0.5 mm. He lives in the axils of young leaves and buds of wild strawberries. For the winter, the nematode hides in the tissue of the plant. The peak of worm activity occurs in the month of May, when the active growth of strawberries begins. Re-nematode appears on the bushes in the fall.
For strawberry nematodes, there are characteristic signs:
The plant ceases to develop, becomes dwarf.
Peduncles and buds of strawberries thicken and shorten.
The leaves are deformed, darken, become brown and dry.
Fruiting in bushes affected by the nematode is almost completely absent. Identified plants must be removed from the garden. This place is not recommended to plant strawberries for 5 years.
The spread of the pest occurs with seedlings. To avoid damage, you need to carefully select planting material, harvest it only from healthy plants. Before planting, all strawberry seedlings must undergo processing. For this, seedlings need to be placed in a container with hot water (about 50 degrees) and kept there for 15-20 minutes. Such a procedure can only be carried out if the plant is at rest.
Important! During processing, water should fall on all parts of the plant!
Strawberry mite
This pest is very small. The insect hibernates in the hearts of the bushes. From early spring, the tick comes to the surface of young leaves. Activity seen since the month of May.
Recognizing the affected bushes is easy. Young leaves affected by a tick wrinkle, turn yellow before the due date and die. The crop is smaller, the berries lose their taste.
Pest control is carried out from early spring immediately after heat treatment of plantings. Repeated spraying is carried out with a solution of malathion. After collecting the entire crop, you need to repeat the processing of the beds with the same preparation.
As a preventive measure, it is advisable to mow the leaves of the dugout garden immediately after fruiting. Together with the leaves, the pest, its larvae, will also leave. After such cleaning, you need to loosen the aisles. Before laying a new strawberry plantation, it is necessary to sanitize the seedlings.
Spider mite on wild strawberry
This pest lives on the back of the leaf, wrapping it in a cobweb. The tick feeds on the cell sap of the plant. The insect hibernates under the fallen foliage in the upper soil layer. In affected plants, winter hardiness is greatly reduced.
The affected bushes can be identified by the bright spots that appear on the leaves. Then the leaves turn yellow and dry. The attack of a tick on strawberries is facilitated by dry, hot weather. A massive invasion of a spider mite is observed in late July - August.
As a fight against a spider mite, colloidal sulfur is sprayed in early spring. Treatments are carried out several times, changing drugs. The use of the same drugs leads to the development of immunity in the insect.
To prevent damage to the planting, strawberries in the garden in the autumn are cleaned of old leaves, weeds are regularly harvested.
Cinnamon stick
This large insect belongs to the category of sucking. Pest larvae live on strawberries in foam, which is a protection for them. Penny eggs hibernate on strawberry leaves and in weeds. Therefore, to combat the pest, weeds are removed and sprayed with Fufanon. They must be treated carefully: the use of the drug at the time of flowering and fruiting is prohibited.
During this period, infusions of herbs are used against pennies:
tobacco
marigolds;
Luke;
garlic.
Planting marigolds along a bed of strawberries will serve as a good preventive measure against an insect.
Strawberry Slugs
Great damage to strawberries is caused by slugs that attack the beds since May. Slugs wield only at night, therefore it is rather difficult to detect a pest.
To combat slugs, you can use mechanical means of exposure and adherence to agricultural practices. Everyone knows that most often slugs affect groomed plantings. On weed-free beds, where row-spacing is constantly loosening, there is no pest.
The first rule in the fight against slugs is to keep the beds clean and the distance between the plants. Thickened plantings attract pests.
Rule number 2 - slugs do not like rough surfaces, they have a very tender abdomen. Based on this, you should sprinkle plenty of space between the rows of pepper, mustard, slaked lime or copper sulphate. Upon contact with such a surface, the pest will burn.
After pruning old leaves from the repaired bush, it is necessary to process and destroy all remaining pests and larvae.
Strawberry weevil
This pest attacks not only strawberries, but also affects other crops. Weevil is a small grayish beetle that is very harmful to garden strawberries.
If the weevil is working on the beds, then the bushes are without buds, as if they were cut off. There are also buds hanging on a thin stalk that are about to fall off.
Strawberry weevil lays eggs inside the buds, nibbling the pedicels. Over time, there appears a caterpillar that gnaws the bud. In the middle of summer, the second generation of weevil appears, which work on the leaves of wild strawberries, after which they leave for the winter. Overwintering strawberry pest in the soil.
When combating weevil, spraying with an actellik is used, which is carried out before flowering. When the pest reappears, the treatment is carried out in the summer, before it leaves for wintering.
Experienced gardeners successfully fight weevil without the use of chemicals. As a solution for spraying use an infusion of mustard powder and wood ash. For this, mustard powder, 3 kg of wood ash, 50 g of laundry soap are diluted in 10 liters of water. Processing is carried out during the budding period.
You can use biologically active drugs: Fitoverm, Akarin. Processing with these agents is carried out in early May.
