wild strawberries

nancy Tue May 11, 2010 2:24 pm

Once upon a time someone (or something) planted wild strawberries as groundcover at my house. It spreads like wildfire! Fortunately it is easy to pull. I have left some of it as is and it now has tiny strawberries on it. I have never eaten one (I don't know why). Should I look at this as a gift and pick and eat them? Surely they aren't poisonous. The flowers are tiny little yellow ones instead of the bigger white ones I see in photos here and in other gardener's gardens. What would you do? Thanks!

Ha-v-v Tue May 11, 2010 2:37 pm

We have wild strawberries and we found a patch today, one of my guys picked it tasted it, quite sour Smile

Yuck mom

too bad too because there is a lot. I was reading some where about the color of the blossoms and cant remember at the moment. I googled transplanting wild strawberries. http://garden.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Wild_Strawberries
I wanted to see if I could utilize the wild ones and bring them into the SFG Smile

I did decide not to.

Ha-v-v

Dunkinjean Tue May 18, 2010 9:33 pm

I remember many years ago growing up in our town, at the end of our street there was a field of wild strawberries. There were just our house and 2 other houses on the block!
We would walk down to the strawberry field, pick the strawberries, bring them home, put them into bowls, then add milk and sugar. - Yummy!

Jola Wed May 19, 2010 9:09 am

Ha-v-v, if your wild strawberries were sour then they must had been not ripe. I also have heard that some of wild growing wild strawberries are not particularly tasty.
Wild strawberries, or alpine strawberries, are one of my favorite fruits. They are much better, in my opinion, then traditional strawberries. To experience their full flavor they must grow in sunny position and be ripe. I have been growing red fruit variety, and this year I will grow yellow and white fruit variety.
Nancy, I've never seen yellow flowers on alpine (wild) strawberries! What color is fruit?

Ha-v-v Wed May 19, 2010 9:23 am

Well as for "ripe" wild strawberries I would think the bright red color was the key:) or a deeper red, we wait till they are real red and they are still sour. Just the other day again we tried. Same sour face happens. And I did read the same that some wild strawberries arent tastey. I did some reading and chose not to try and transplant them.
Ha-v-v

Jola Wed May 19, 2010 9:48 am

If you want good alpine strawberries buy seeds from any seed company which carries them. They grow very easily from seeds. I would never transplant wild wild strawberries to my garden. They are nice in wild, but for a garden you need garden varieties.

Ha-v-v Wed May 19, 2010 10:58 am

Oh yes

Next year I will get strawberry seeds. But Im forever trying to be frugal and I love experimenting. I like taking cuttings from native plants if I can and other things to see if they will grow and that led to me to research wild strawberries, and I quickly found that wasnt what I wanted to do, and shared that in my earlier post. Next year the garden will be bigger and I can think about strawberries from our place. Maybe this can be the last year I buy strawberries to make jam. That would be nice. I dont mind buying them here though, there is a local fellow we get them from, he brings them up from Louisiana and at 12 dollars a flat this year, I bought 4. It keeps me in the community and is nice when I can go to the little market.

I will definitely try the Alpine strawberries, Ive not tried any strawberries and excited to try. We have good sun for them too. I look forward to fall and the spring planning already Smile

Im planning next spring now really in my head.
Ha-v-v

nancy Wed May 19, 2010 11:10 am

The friut on my wild ground-cover strawberries is small and red. Almost raspberry size. And they are everywhere! They spread like wildfire! Fortunately they are easy to pull out.

I bought some "real" strawberry plants over the weekend - some junebearing and some everbearing. Their box has not yet been assembled, but I am so excited to get them in the ground! I never thought I'd grow them because the wild ones make me so crazy! But, I'm going to give it a try.

miinva Wed May 19, 2010 11:33 am

I can't imagine pulling them out, I think they're pretty Smile

I'm not big on manicured lawns though, I see them as vast ecological wastelands and prefer mine to have a more 'meadow' look to it, other than keeping a band of mowed grass around our house to keep the spiders and snakes at bay. I read an article about cities out west that went from mandating manicured lawns to encouraging more natural landscapes because of a drought and I thought that was a great solution, since natural landscaping doesn't require the constant watering or application of chemicals. I'm sure the pollinators appreciated it!

nancy Wed May 19, 2010 2:28 pm

I feel the same way about manicured lawns. I'm pulling the strawberries that are trying hard to invade my flower beds. They keep trying to grow where I have put something else. Grr... If they grow in the yard, the landlord cuts them down when he mows. At least they are native to Ohio.

miinva Wed May 19, 2010 4:08 pm

I know what you mean about flowerbeds, my flowers are my babies and I can be pretty picky about flowerbeds! I'm not quite as militant about the gardens, but mel's mix makes weeding so easy that the beds don't require much management.

Speaking of native, I drove to North Carolina last weekend and it was sad to see the places where the kudzu is taking everything over Sad

I was at the co-op and I saw a scottish broom, which has gorgeous flowers, but when I got home and googled them I discovered that they're considered a noxious weed in Canada because they seed prolifically, so I decided not to buy one.

Jola Wed May 19, 2010 5:35 pm

Nancy, you say "real" strawberries, but wild or alpine strawberries are different plants from "real" strawberries. They do not produce runners, they can take some shade and they taste completely different from "real"
strawberries. I think that the names for them in English are very confusing.
In Poland, where I'm from, we have completely different names for them. We call wild or alpine strawberries "poziomki" and cultivated, or "real" strawberries "truskawki". Even without knowing Polish you can see the difference.
If you want to try something different, try real alpine strawberries which are not strawberries - complicated, isn't it?!

Megan Wed May 19, 2010 6:52 pm

miinva wrote:I was at the co-op and I saw a scottish broom, which has gorgeous flowers, but when I got home and googled them I discovered that they're considered a noxious weed in Canada because they seed prolifically, so I decided not to buy one.

Scottish Broom is a weed, but Sweet Broom isn't. I have started Sweet Broom a couple of times from Home Depot plants. They are really pretty. Unfortunately they must not have been in a good spot, because the first two lasted only two years, and the ones I planted last year didn't make it through the winter. Still trying to decide what to put there!

And, to (more or less) stay on topic Smile

the strawberries I am growing from seed this year are a yellow wild strawberry. The seedlings are SO tiny! Shocked

Jola Wed May 19, 2010 9:09 pm

Yes! They are tiny. Every time I want to see them I have to put glasses on What a Face

Megan Wed May 19, 2010 9:16 pm

I need to thin / re-distribute them, but they are so small at this point that I am afraid even with tweezers or a toothpick I would crush them all. So I guess I get to wait!

bullfrogbabe Wed May 19, 2010 9:25 pm

When I was a kid I loved to pick and eat wild strawberries when I lived in southern Ontario. They were really tiny, with the largest ones being the size of sweet green peas and the smaller ones baby peas or even smaller. The plants weren't very big and they had white flowers with yellow centers. The deeper red the berry, the sweeter they were.

They taste better than any cultivated strawberries I have ever had but it does take alot of time picking them to even fill a small bowl. I still stop to eat them when I see them even now. They aren't as common here in Petawawa as this is wild blueberry country but I do get a taste every once in a while.

Wild or Common Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana)

Megan Wed May 19, 2010 9:28 pm

There was not a species name listed for the seed I bought. I will post pictures if I ever get fruit! (And I hope I do, because I have a bet on with martha! Smile

)

nancy Thu May 20, 2010 9:31 am

bullfrog - I'm going to try one of the wild ones in my yard when I get home tonite. I keep hearing how bitter they are, but you've convinced me perhaps not. I also have a couple of places where I should be able to get some pics. I'll keep you all posted!

wild strawberries Icon_flower

bullfrogbabe Thu May 20, 2010 7:07 pm

There a few different species, perhaps the wild species you have are different than the ones here?

nancy Thu May 20, 2010 8:43 pm

Well, I tried one - it had no taste! It just felt like a mouthfull of seeds. Hmmm... They're very small - the size of raspebrries. And they are everywhere!

Here they are:

bullfrogbabe Thu May 20, 2010 9:24 pm

They look like a different kind than the ones that grow here in Ontario. Your berries have seeds that stick out off the surface instead of being in dimples and the leaves are a slightly different shape.

Jola Thu May 20, 2010 10:59 pm

Bullfrogbabe, your wild strawberries Fragaria virginiana are the best wild strawberries, and were used to hybridize, I think, some European strawberries to get very good cultivated variety of "real" strawberries.
Nancy, you are just unlucky with your wild strawberry variety. If you're really determined to try wild strawberries, and they taste completely different from cultivated ones - try growing them from seeds. They are easy to grow.

pattipan Thu May 20, 2010 11:21 pm

nancy wrote:Well, I tried one - it had no taste! It just felt like a mouthfull of seeds. Hmmm... They're very small - the size of raspebrries. And they are everywhere!

Nancy,
The yellow flower brings to mind what we used to call Indian Strawberries. Also called Barren Strawberry, False Strawberry or Mock Strawberry. Do a Google image search for "Potentilla indica" and see if that's your berry. They are not poisonous, just tasteless.

Patti

littlesapphire Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:19 am

I don't know about wild strawberries that grow elsewhere, but the ones you find here in New York and Pennsylvania are so sweet and wonderful, they taste like candy. We have a huge patch of them in our back yard that I'm keeping weed free in hopes of having a huge crop of the tiny bites of heaven.

cansaskgard Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:52 am

Bullfrogbabe - I have to laugh... we just moved in to our new house in Feb this year and have now discovered that most of the whole north end of my front yard (corner lot) is the wild strawberry with dandelions as only the minor issue. wild strawberries Icon_lol

We will see how things go with them but they are always getting mowed over when we cut our grass...

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