Down To Earth

Strawberry, the sweetest of seasons

Kristin Green
Posted 6/24/16

One of my earliest horticultural memories falls on a perfect June day at the beginning of strawberry season. I remember lying belly down, feet windshield-wipering, eating wild strawberries plucked …

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Down To Earth

Strawberry, the sweetest of seasons

Posted

One of my earliest horticultural memories falls on a perfect June day at the beginning of strawberry season. I remember lying belly down, feet windshield-wipering, eating wild strawberries plucked from a sunny slope of lawn while my mother and her best friend sat nearby drinking endless cups of tea. (Or was it something stronger?) I own the moment of discovery as if no one pointed them out, though Mum probably had as a distraction and whine preventative.

The red berries, miniatures the size of my pinky fingernails, were fairly well hidden between tufts of “pony daisies” and beneath their own deep-green trifoliate leaves, and zinged with a sweetness more delicious and addictive than a sheet of candy dots. I made it my mission to search out and savor every berry in the patch. I might have shared one or two with the grownups. Maybe. And never whined again. (Not true.)

Barring adult-onset allergies (perish the thought) I don’t expect my taste for wild strawberries to ever fade and have planted a couple of different species in my garden. Fragaria virginiana, being the most common lawn dweller, able to flatten itself under mower blades when necessary, must be the one I remember so fondly. In my garden it has yet to fling many stolons into the lawn, preferring to carpet my backyard border instead. Alas, it’s in too much shade to produce. Or else the bunnies and woodchuck beat me to the berries.

I make a point annually to check a more reliable patch of F. vesca, also known as woodland or alpine strawberry, before the oxeye daisies go to seed. First I have to locate them. Years ago, I planted them in a bed off to the side of my driveway. They’re still there but half hidden now under self-sown stems of rudbeckia, penstemon, and fennel. (I had intended that bed be low-growing and tidy. It is not.) Despite crowding, they bloom away and produce candy-sweet treats. I didn’t share a single one from my first harvest. I’ll share the next batch, for sure. She says.

Unlike the cultivated strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa — a cross between F. virginiana and West Coast native F. chiloensis), which have a disappointingly brief local season if you love shortcake and whipped cream as much as I do, alpine strawberries are ever-bearing through the summer, though the first June handful is the sweetest. They are native to most of the Northern Hemisphere and will happily grow in a sunny spot with decent soil and a little room to fling their stolons, drop seeds (any missed berries will self-sow) and increase ranks.

Fragaria vesca ‘Golden Alexandria’ has chartreuse foliage and becomes a sizable plant (to about 12”) but doesn’t send out stolons. I wish it did. ‘Variegata’ has gorgeous white splashes at the leaf margins and, like most plants with a diminished capacity for photosynthesis, is a slow grower. It is willing, however, to deposit adorable clonal offspring at the ends of one- to two-foot long stolons on any bare ground it finds. I put that one in a pot this year to keep it from being overwhelmed by my madhouse mess.

It’s possible I have an overly romantic and misty memory of that first June discovery but can there be such a thing? The flavor of strawberries, wild and cultivated, defines June, and, after their season is over, becomes preserved more faithfully by nostalgia than by jam making or freezing. In her novel Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson asks, “... when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth ...?” We gardeners might answer, only in June.

Kristin Green is the horticulturist at Mount Hope Farm and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.

Kristin Green

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