Strawberries and Caneberries

I spent some time over the holidays doing some reading, and one intriguing book I finished was the recently published "Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal.

As most people in the berry industry, I believe quite strongly that there is a lot of variation in strawberry bed temperatures. Sides that face the sun longer tend to be warmer and those that don't are cooler.

A lot of growers already know this, but here we have a clear (no pun intended) demonstration that the thin colored plastics deployed as mulch in our strawberries are not as opaque as one would think.

This piece was originally posted in late November, but see updated postscript concerning the identity of the pest at the bottom: Already giving away the punchline in the title, but I was approached yesterday by a grower experiencing an unusual problem on his strawberries.

During a tour yesterday with our new small fruit plant pathologist Akif Eskalen and Tom Gordon we happened into some blackberry canes hollowed out by sphecid wasps, most likely of the genus Pemphredon.