When growing strawberries at home, there are actually quite a few things that can go wrong,

and I'm not just talking about choosing our variety, watering incorrectly, maybe not giving it the right climate I'm talking

about pest diseases we have none of the Gerald Holmes on the show he's the

founding director of the strawberry center at Cal Poly State University it has a

PhD in plant pathology. So this is kind of your area, Gerald, and when we talk about home garden specifically, what would you say are the more common pest or diseases that can hit a strawberry plant?

Well, the one, the most obvious one that you're going to see is Botrytis fruit rot or gray mold.

And the fruit, if you've ever stored strawberries for

any length of time that will rot them it's the most important fruit

disease of strawberries worldwide.

And the good news about the home gardener is you can get to it before the fungus does.

I get out there and pick them and eat them before they're stored for

any length of time. Yeah. Before the bruise leads to an infection which

leads to the mold. So you can do a lot and protecting them

from the rain protecting them from the soil is really important to

preventing Botritus graye. Another one that you would see is powdery mildew.

Fortunately, that's not as big of a problem but it can be a pretty significant problem.

People can control that with either resistance in the variety but if you don't have a variety that's resistant to it or if

you don't know which is more typical you can use things like a sulfur dust which is

organically approved for managing powdery mildew but those are kind of

above ground problems below ground you have some serious concerns as well, root rots, vascular wilts, and we think of

four main diseases of strawberries in California.

We have verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt,

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