Strawberry leaf spot

What you see

Small round spots that begin deep purple-red and develop pale grey or white centres with a persistent purple ring. Heavy infection makes the whole leaf look scorched.

Conditions

Warm, wet, humid weather with long leaf wetness. Splashing rain moves it up from old infected leaves and debris.

Treatment

Remove and bin spotted leaves. It rarely justifies spraying on a home crop - the fruit is unaffected and the plant grows through it.

Prevention

Renovate the bed after fruiting: cut the old foliage off, clear it away and let clean new leaves come. Space plants, water at the base, and replace the bed every three to four years.

Months: May, June, July, August, September

Plants

Strawberry

Remedies

Bordeaux mixture (copper), Mulch

The thing people get wrong

The post-harvest haircut is the whole control and hardly anyone does it. Shearing off all the old leaves after the last picking, raking them out and letting the plant regrow clean removes most of the inoculum for next year - it costs twenty minutes and does more than a season of spraying.