How can I stop insects attacking my strawberry plants?
Question:Is there a way to protect them from hungry insects and slugs with having to dig them and and put them in pots?
Answers:
I really can't stand slugs - especially when you're picking strawberries and your fingers touch something cold, wet and slimy! Eeeeeek!!
Having our own house and garden this year, I have planted 12 strawberry plants in a hanging basket. (6 plants spaced round the sides and 6 on top.) The plants came brown shrivelled and pretty much lifeless til I planted them up and they are looking green and full of life! I hope they will give a super harvest of sweet aromatic strawberries!! One thing I won't have to worry about is slimy slugs!! I'm getting worried about the birds coming in my garden though!
If you don't/can't do hanging basket idea, people put straw down underneath strawberry plants to keep fruit off soil and to keep 'em clean too - you don't get the muddy water splashback. To deter slugs, you can put crushed eggshells around the base of plants or sharp sand/grit - it prickles their soft underbellies.
What I've recently read, is using copperwire/copperbands around the base of the stem. The can't bear touching it apparently - it gives them electric shock (?!?!)
As for the insects, I'm not sure. I keep my plants/flowers bug free by spraying them with a water spray which has a drop of washing-up liquid in it. It keeps 'em off me roses!
Hope you have good luck with the strawberries!
Diatomaceous earth, or I have heard some people use eggshells. The bits will act as razor wire for slugs.
Not that you want to do this, but I had great results from a hanging strawberry plant.
i dont know where you live because i am picking strawberries now, and i wouldnt spray them with any thing now.kill pest before fruiting.
The bloody slugs ate all my plants so I put down slug pellets. It works.
I have a beer trap and it caught loads, unfortunately I now have a pot of fermenting, rotting slugs. Yuk!
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