Plant guide:🍓 Strawberries
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⚠ Minor🩺
Growth
Misshapen Strawberries
Commonly affects: Fragaria × ananassa (Strawberry)
Fruit develops an irregular, lumpy, or cockscomb-like shape rather than the expected uniform conical form.
Potential Causes
- 1Incomplete pollination — strawberries have many individual seeds (achenes) that each need pollination for that section of fruit to develop normally
- 2Cool weather during flowering reducing pollinator activity
- 3Frost damage to the flower's centre during a cold snap
Solution Steps
- 1Encourage thorough pollinator visits by avoiding pesticide use during flowering
- 2Hand-pollinate by gently brushing open flowers with a small brush if pollinator activity seems low
- 3Protect flowering plants from unexpected late frosts with row covers
- 4Note that misshapen fruit is still fully edible, just cosmetically different
Prevention Tip
Since each strawberry is actually many tiny fruits fused together, thorough pollination across the whole flower is what produces an evenly-shaped berry.
