Hi and welcome to NM. I have grown strawberries for years. I do sometimes get the holes on the sides of berries and I think it is bites from insects. I try and keep a straw or bark mulch around my berries as it insulates them from the soil and any munching insects. It also helps to keep the moisture in the soil. I also sprinkle sulfur around all my plantings. Someone told me years ago that with our alkaline soil, we need it to make the iron in our soil available to the plants. It is very inexpensive and I just grab a handful and sprinkle when I plant. Good luck!

Hi again, I got an email message that you asked about the sulphur. I don't see it here though? But I don't think, since it is just a natural mineral that it would be any problem and you can eat the berries asap. It sprinkles out of the box in yellow flakes and I work it into the soil before I plant of around the plants if they are established.

Hi! I'm growing strawberries in Abuquerque and I get a lot of holes on the berries as well. I found out that they are caused by rolly pollies (pill bugs) I use Sevin dust on them early in the season and it helps for quite a while. Mulch encourages them, but it still need to be done, so I mulch and then dust. Good luck!

Thanks for all your advice, but I think I found the reason for the holes in the strawberries. It's caused from ground dampness caused from the wood chips on the ground that stay moist under the berries. The little sowbugs or wood lice are living in the ground near the fruit and help themselves to the fruit, I mean who would pass up a free meal of stawberries. So my problem wasn't the bugs, but the dampness. What I've done is removed all the bark and replaced it with straw, so now the strawberries hopefully won't rot. I wonder if this technique has been used since strawberries were discovered...thus the name "STRAWBERRIES."