How to Protect Strawberry Berries from Gray Rot Featured

Weeds are immune to all these pests and diseases. Why is a strawberry plant so fragile?

Did BigFarma breed them so we would need to buy lots of chemicals to keep them alive?

Eat weeds instead.

What's your recommendation for how to minimize the formation of rot in the plastic box of strawberries after I bring them home?

Once we buy strawberries, it only takes us a few days to use a quart. To facilitate consumption, we remove the stems, and either:

• My husband's method: soak them in tapwater acidulated with bottled lemon juice
• My method: squirt a little bottled lemon juice over them, agitate gently, then rinse with tap water

Then we remove excess water and put them in a storage box with a double layer of paper towel on the bottom.

I find the lemon juice is unnoticeable.

Eat them.

I live near a big strawberry growing area but seldom buy them. Picked too soon, they are far from full flavor ripeness. Many are still white at the top.

You can get them to change to better color, but they will not ripen and get better flavor. Last good berries I had was from the farmer's market in CT, picked ripe and full of flavor by one of the ladies there.

Thanks Cindy. I'll try it. I've always left them in the perforated plastic box they come in, in the fridge but often the ones on the bottom start rotting within about 2 days. Right now our Aldi has a sale; a 1 lb box for $1.29. They look fully ripe with no green or white areas on the berries and have a strong sweet strawberry odor.