How to Identify Strawberry Leaf Rollers

Strawberry leaf rollers feed almost exclusively on the leaves of strawberry, raspberry and blackberry plants, but they have been seen feeding on clover in strawberry fields. They're capable of causing severe damage to your plants, including loss and dwarfing of fruit. Knowing how to spot them is vital to your garden's well-being.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Search on the underside of strawberry leaves for leaf roller eggs. They're tiny but may be visible to acute eyes or with a hand lens. At first they're a pale green, which blends perfectly with the leaves. When hatching is near, they turn yellow.

2. Be alert for larvae feeding openly on the tops--or bottoms--of your strawberry leaves. These are strawberry leaf roller larvae and will only be openly feeding on the plants for a few days before they first web themselves into silken tubes that they expand as they feed, then eventually roll themselves up in leaves and spin cocoons to transform into moths.

3. Check for silken tubes or tunnels on the underside of strawberry leaves. These contain feeding larvae.

4. Remove rolled-up or folded and webbed leaves immediately. Burn or crush them to kill the leaf roller larvae inside.

5. Look for plant foliage that has the appearance of being scorched or burned. They can be a sign of severe strawberry leaf roller infestation.

Tips & Warnings

• You're most likely to see the most severe damage from strawberry leaf rollers in your plants during June, when the first hatching of larvae have completed feeding and begun their metamorphosis. Strawberry leaf rollers can have multiple hatchings per year, so you cannot afford to be complacent at any time.
• If you disturb or remove strawberry leaf roller larvae from the folded-leaf cocoons they create, they'll start over again, folding new leaves into another cocoon.