Can you plant a strawberry to grow into a plant? A ? someone asked me.

[dipence71]

Someone ask me if you could plant a strawberry and have it grow into a plant. Thought I would see what you all think. I have never heard of this before.

 

[journey11]

My husband just asked me the same thing the other day. I don't think they do, but I'm not sure why.

 

[patandchickens]

Well, strawberries do have seeds -- each of the little hard flecks all over the outside of the strawberry is a seed. So each berry has, I dunno, dozens and dozens and dozens of seeds all over it.

You can, in principle, grow new plants from each of those seeds. It requires a bit of familiarity with seeding, as they have to be cold stratified and are pretty small seeds to boot, and not every seed will necessarily be fertile... but I know of know reason why you couldn't do it if you really wanted to, and a quick google supports that.

However, in practice it would be a silly thing to do since you cannot expect seedlings to be true to variety for any of the modern strawberry culrivars. And it is a heck of a lot of work as compared to propagating by runners.

There *are* some alpine (more or less ornamental rather than culinary, although the fruits can be eaten) strawberries for which you can buy seed commercially. I also have some vague notion kicking around the back of my head that there may be some everbearing/day-neutral variety for which seed is sold, but I dunno.

Does that help any?

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[hoodat]

There is also the Alpine strawberry which are normally planted from seed. They are perrenials and the berry is smaller and less productive. Some say it's sweeter, some say not as sweet. I've seen them but never tried them in my garden.

 

[digitS']

Alpine strawberries are very easy to grow from seed. At least, that was my experience - must have had, nearly 100% germination!

However, the fruit is so tiny it would take half a day to pick a cup full !

Johnny's sells seed for "traditional strawberries."

Steve

 

[elf]

I have seen wild strawberrries growing on country roadsides around here, but rarely. They plants and berries were sparse, tiny, but very tasty when I sampled them. They seemed very like the Alpine strawberry. I don't think there were many, if any runners. I assume they came from seed, as the ones where I remember taking my walks were not near old homesites.

 

[patandchickens]

I have seen wild strawberrries growing on country roadsides around here, but rarely. They plants and berries were sparse, tiny, but very tasty when I sampled them. They seemed very like the Alpine strawberry. I don't think there were many, if any runners. I assume they came from seed, as the ones where I remember taking my walks were not near old homesites.

Can't speak to other areas or other species (if any) of wild strawberries, but the wild strawberries that positively INFEST (in a good way ) parts of my lawn are spreading almost entirely by runners, as far as I can tell. They produce prodigious numbers of runners, more than a lot of cultivated strawberries. To the point where I'm trying to train them as a groundcover in one of the flower beds

(e.t.a - As far as I know, the reason the alpine strawberry seeds sold commercially are not difficult to start is that they have already been cold-treated, aren't they? Not that stratifying seeds is particularly difficult of course, just another step to do.)

Pat

 

[wifezilla]

I planted Alpine strawberries this year from seed.