The Best Way To Water Strawberry Plants That Helps Prevent Disease

Like all plants, strawberries need water to survive, whether they're growing in a raised bed, hanging basket, or trained up a trellis. They require about 1 to 2 inches of water per week, and how you deliver that H₂O can make all the difference in keeping your berries healthy. While a quick spray with the hose might sound like the perfect way to meet their needs, that method can do more harm than good. Instead, use a system that delivers water straight to the soil at the base of the plant. 

The pressure from a hose can cause soil to splash onto both the leaves and fruit. That soil could carry harmful bacteria or fungi, which can transfer onto the strawberries and contaminate the plant. Fuzzy mold is the first sign of an infection. This progresses into mushy wounds that may appear salmon-colored, sunken brown, or even black before the fruit eventually shrivels.

One particularly harmful fungus for strawberry plants is Colletotrichum acutatum. According to the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, this fungus lives in the soil but thrives in moist, humid conditions. It can even survive for up to nine months without a host plant. The trouble begins when soil carrying the pathogen splashes onto your strawberries, allowing spores to develop. Each time they get splashed, either from your hose or rain, the spores can spread, putting the rest of the patch at risk. Before long, your once-thriving strawberries could be hanging on for dear life.

To decrease the chances of spreading disease, you should avoid any watering system that splashes soil onto your strawberry plant. This includes hoses and other overhead watering methods. Not only can splashed soil land on the fruit, but if a diseased strawberry is already lurking in your patch, water can pick up fungal spores and drop them onto healthy parts of the plant. Instead, focus on delivering water directly to the base of the plant. A soaker hose, which is a porous line that runs through the bed, gently supplies water to the soil. A drip line is similar and sends water straight to the root instead of wetting the entire plant. Even a simple watering can, when used carefully at the plant's base, works if you go slowly.

Strawberry growers should also avoid any watering system that wets the leaves or fruit, such as a sprinkler. That is because excess moisture encourages fungal disease on both leaves and fruit. If you manually water your strawberries instead of using a soaker or drip system, do so in the morning so splashed water droplets have plenty of time to dry. To take it a step further, you can add straw mulch around your strawberry plants. Mulch is helpful in colder months because it regulates soil temperature and absorbs extra moisture, which, as we know, strawberries do not like.