Pots of Fruit

Alpine Strawberry Propagation Experiments

I decided to propagate some more alpine strawberries a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd try an experiment.  I had already tried sowing some of the seeds from last year's fruit but nothing came of them so I thought I'd try to pick out some of the little runners that the alpine strawberry throws out.  They are nowhere near as long as the ones on normal strawberries so it can be a bit awkward to pin them down into some soil in order for them to root well before being detached from the mother plant.  So I cut off some of the off shoots and order to see if I could get them to root using other methods.  I put two into pots to see what would happen.  This happened.  Oops.  They just went down hill and today they look like they're dead I'm afraid.  When I cut off the shoots there were tiny little beginnings of roots but there obviously just wasn't enough.  I gave them loads of water and left them in the shade but it was obviously just too hard for them to get water to replace that which had been loast through transpiration. 
The same day however I decided to put two other shoots in water to see would they root that way.  I've seen my mother do this loads of times with geraniums and seen as the alpine strawberry seems like it tries to root in mid air while still on the plant I reasoned that it would probably do quite well in water.  I wrote the date on the jar so that I would see how long it took for a reasonable set of roots to grow.
Below is a picture of one of the runners, or off shoots, that I cut off.  When I put this in the water there was only a tiny dot of a root appearing. The little photo was taken one day after I started this experiment and the root had already doubled in size.  This gave me confidence to just wait and see what happened.  One of the cuttings had no roots at all and so nothing happened for about 4 days and then suddenly two little roots started coming out.  Every day I'd look at the cuttings and be amazed at how quickly the roots were forming.  10 days after I put them in the water this is what they look like(below).  I presume that the one on the left is ready to plant by now but I might just give it a few more days to be sure about it.  I've never done this before so I'm not really sure when you're supposed to actually plant them, but I'm guessing that the more roots there are the better the young plant will get on when it goes into soil. 
I find it fascinating that plants can root in just water and seem to be quite happy.  I wonder how they manage to find nutrients with which to build roots.  I know they'll still be getting sugars through photosynthesis but is this enough?  Surely it needs other stuff from the soil. Well, anyway, they seem fine so I'll plant them out in a few days and do the same with some more cuttings.  I love alpine strawberries and I want to make sure I have a good supply of nice healthy ones every year.
Doing experiments like these are really important I think because you begin to realise that things might happen that surprise you.  I'm hoping to get into the habit of just trying things out without caring whether they are successful or not.  Even if my experiments are not always succesful I will still learn something about what not to do.  So I suppose in a way all of these types of experiments will be a success in some way. 
I also have an exeriment on the go with some tiny redcurrant cuttings.  I've no idea what they will do but I'll let you know.




 

Alpine Strawberries - Growing and Propagating

Our most successful fruit so far this year has been the alpine strawberry.  Safely nestled on a little slug and woodlice proof island (almost) they have been fruiting for months now. 

They require very little maintenance once they have been planted and provide an abundance of little strawberries.

SOIL AND PLANTING

They seem to like fertile, well drained soil which is slightly acidic

Our alpine strawberries have done really well in containers.  The bigger the container the better as the size of the plant will match the size of the container.  We have two alpine strawberries in a largish car tyre and they are the biggest ones even though all of the runners were planted at the same time.

Make sure that the crown of the plant is not planted below the surface of the soil as they are prone to rotting. 

MAINTENANCE

Once you plant them there is very little maintenance however the older leaves gradually die and I remove these as well as the fruiting stalks that have finished up.  I do this to try to reduce the possibility of woodlice and slugs taking up residence in the decaying leaves. 

Also, as an extra deterrant to slugs and woodlice I soak each pot in water every so often.  Any visitors that are sleeping over in the strawberry quickly leave for the safety of dry land. 

They need plenty of water throughout the fruiting season but this year we didn't need to worry about that too much as it has been really wet for the last two months.

PROPAGATING

I have read that the alpine strawberries don't send out runners but they do create runner like pieces of new plant that can be taken off and planted.

You can see the little roots forming on the new shoot.  If you weigh this down with a stone for a while so that it touches the soil the roots will grow stronger.  In a couple of weeks you can cut the stalk that connects it to the mother plant.  Leave it there a little longer just to give it a chance to catch its breath before you remove it and put it in a smallish pot.

This will probably start to send up flowers fairly soon but I will pinch them off for a while just to let it get a head start.

All strawberry seem to have to be replaced after a number of years.  This could be between 3 and 6.  I will find out more about this myself over the coming years but I'm sure it pays to have new plants coming on every year to ensure a steady supply of strawberries.

Apparently these strawberries can be grown from seed as well although I haven't tried it.  I will though, and I'll do a post on the success or failure of the venture next year.

HARVESTING

Our alpine strawberries have been giving fruit since the end of May and they show no signs of stopping now in the start of August.  In order to have a enough fruit to have a couple of bowls of strawberries every few days you would need about 14 full size plants I think...maybe a few more. 

Once they turn a deep red colour they must be picked fairly quickly as they tend to go off on the plant within a day.  The taste turns bad so you need to go around every day checking to see which ones are ready.  Once you pick them you must eat them within 30 minutes really.  They don't keep well at all as they seem to just go dry and tasteless once off the plant.

In the picture above you can see a few stages of strawberries fruiting.  The red strawberries look ready for picking from this angle but once you look at the other side they are still a bit white.

So far this year they have been very satisfying and I would really recommend them as they are so easy to look after and are quite attractive to look at too.

Alpine Strawberries - An Introduction

There are lots of strawberry flowers in our garden at the moment which will hopefully translate into juicy, mouth watering, tasty bowls of fruit in a couple of months. 

We have two types of strawberry in the collection.  The first one we got was an alpine strawberry.

About the Alpine Strawberry - This one, above, is the original one we got from the organic farm.  It was fairly small when we got it but it grew to be nice and big fairly quickly and gave us a good few fruits in its first year.  It will grow to be about a foot across. Alpine strawberries give a much smaller fruit than the standard strawberry, about 1cm in length, but the flavour is quite intense so they are definitely worth growing.  They seem to fruit for longer than ordinary strawberries and they don't need as much sun - apparently they produce the best flavoured fruit in half shade.  Also, the fruits did not seem to be too troubled by slugs last year as the fruiting stems stick straight up into the air rather than trailing on the ground.

Wood lice are still a bit of a problem but this year Chris is determined to sort that out.

He has discovered that wood lice can't swim!  So here we have most of our strawberries on a raft with four legs that each have their own moat.  The alpine strawberries are at the back with the normal ones at the front.

Slugs, while maybe not being able swim, seem to be able survive a prolonged spell in water.  But we are not sure if they will voluntarily jump into the water in order to seek fresh strawberries to chomp on so we will have to wait and see what happens.  As we also have ordinary strawberries on this raft we are determined to find a way to stop them gaining access.

The alpine strawberries are very easy to propagate as they send out loads of baby plants on short runners during the summer.  I have taken at least 10 runners off the original plant that we got last year and these new plants are already doing really well.

Below is a large car tyre filled with two alpine strawberries that only came into existence in autumn of last year.  While all the baby plants were getting established I kept picking all the flowers off them in order to help them conserve energy.  This tyre will have to have it's own raft made soon.

The alpine strawberries seemed to begin flowering earlier than the normal strawberries and as far as I know they go on longer too.  So overall there seems to be a lot of reasons to grow alpine strawberries even though the fruits are a lot smaller.  This year we will be able to make more comparisons with the other strawberries as we have about 7 normal strawberry plants now which are well established.

The next post on Alpine Strawberries will talk more about how to grow them.