Why were my strawberry leaves red?

When I was growing strawberries this year, the leaves would gradually turn red, starting at the edges and eventually the entire leaf would be bright red (rather pretty actually).

Why did they do this? The plants themselves seemed ok, beared small fruits ok. The plants themselves didn't seem that vigorous. I bought bareroot plants from Raintree.

Mine did that too as the season progressed, but I thought it was the natural progression of the plant cycle. Not for sure tho...

Mine do that too. It doesn't seem to hurt them.

This message was edited Dec 22, 2006 11:14 PM

One explanation could be red stele root rot disease. This disease can cause some reddening or yellowing of leaves. It strikes low and wet areas and comes from nursery stock usually. I don't know if this is what you have or not. If you had this problem, the plants will tend to die out. Certain varieties are fairly resistant to red stele and others are not.

Also certain mineral dificiencies might cause some leaf edge redening.

http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/diseases/series700/rpd701/index.html