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I planted some strawberry plants about 15 days ago, and they started to develop well, but recently they seem to have started to curl up and shrivel.

They've had mostly sun (some get 5 hours a day some get 8 hours a day), for 12 of the 15 days. I've watered 3 times with feed and they have been rained on once.

I attach a photo, they appear to have flopped over and have the leaves curled up, where previously they were standing tall and less curling? The first image is day 11, the second is today, day 15.

I wonder if there's anything obvious I'm doing wrong?

On day 11 they looked like this

On day 15 (today) they looked like this

Joey O
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This sounds like a root problem. Normally when strawberries are transplanted we take as much root as possible; the root bundle (of perhaps a dozen roots coming from the crown) can be 6" / 16cm or more long and the roots need to be strong and healthy. Unfortunately strawberries can suffer from a lot of root diseases. It can happen that the crown contains enough vigour to establish a first leaf but if the root bundle is not healthy and ready to support more new leaves then growth stops and existing leaves collapse. Think back to the source of the plants and transplanting time and how good the roots were.

Colin Beckingham
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  • Thanks Colin, so each plant that is currently showing problems would be a write-off? Nothing I can do to improve the situation? The plants were purchased, I didn't make them myself, I currently have about 5 developing well and 10-12 that are showing signs like the above. – Joey O May 10 '20 at 11:59
  • Commercially produced plants are normally warranted to be disease free; might want to check back with the supplier to see if this is the kind of result that might be expected. Can you guarantee the cleanliness of the soil? – Colin Beckingham May 10 '20 at 12:40