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applestar
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Strawberry Harvest

Today was the day the first wild strawberries ripened. Image

Fragaria virginiana... They appeared on our front lawn between the three shrub type Japanese maples where DH had created a mounded mulched bed. I talked him into keeping them, that they are compatible and will serve as groundcover... And they have spread and grow delicious berries every year with hardly any help from me.

They look pretty tiny next to regular cultivated strawberries, but these first berries are the biggest and they will get smaller until too small to be worth picking and I leave them for the birds. They are packed with flavor. They are extremely fragile and its best not to touch the berries at all -- handling by only stems and calyces.

I float and gently swish them in a bucket of water until all debris float off or sink. Then scoop up and drain.
image.jpg
...After all that and taking pictures, I realized I forgot to check the ones in the backyard garden beds... And found all these, as well as cherries and mulberries.
image.jpg
Combined with the front yard berries, we have a sizable harvest. :D

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pinksand
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That's wonderful applestar! I'm envious as I just watched my first strawberry start to ripen and then came out the next morning to find it half nibbled and then fully munched on the day after that :( Do you have to protect yours in any way?

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applestar
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OH YES! Mostly from Catbirds and robins.

For individual isolated plants with blushing berries, I have done everything from completely burying the berries in the wood shaving mulch, putting deli containers with holes (normally used for uppotting seedlings) and cute off tops of soda bottles (normally used as humidity and hot caps) over the berries, to locking the berry trusses in suet feeder baskets which are not in use during the warm months.

The kids and I have been making birdscares out of shiny aluminum take out containers -- big huge eyes in varying shapes and colors and designs on both sides, hung with a long string from stakes and sticks over the berries. I got the idea from the big yellow and white beach ball sized inflatable balls local u-pick orchard uses in their fruit orchards. These have been satisfyingly effective so far and last year, protected our blueberries and blackberries as well.

For a clustered row, I put up hoops and bird netting.

You do also have to take care of cutworms, slugs, and pill bugs/sawbugs.

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applestar
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There was somthing interesting I noticed while harvesting these strawberries. It was as if *something* had triggered ripening, because every one of them had newly ripened berries. Not just the first berries, though they, too, seemed to have ripened all at once.

There are a few characteristics I look for --
(1) red calyces often mean the berry is ripe
(2) red seeds
(3) high gloss on the surface of the berries -- matte berries are NEVER ripe
(4) can't get any redder to dark red color

Today though, many not quite red berries had high gloss or red seeds. It was very strange. I wondered if it was because we had heavy rain overnight after a long period of near drought.

Then I made an odd discovery. White, high gloss berries with red seeds. At first I dismissed them and went on, but after tasting one of the pink-orange berries that I wouldn't have thought was ripe, but I tried it because it had the high gloss... And it tasted ripe... Sweet, just not as full flavored, I went back and picked three of the white with red seed berries.

I had seen strawberries similar looking to these in catalogs recently, but these white, full sized wild strawberries were hanging on same truss as red berrie. Was it environmental? We're they sport?

After eating a number of the ripe berries with DD's and discussing how some of the orange, not ripe looking ones tasted sweeter than some of the dark red ones, I decided to try the white with red seeded berries. I had already decided to save these seeds and see if they were viable, and see what would grow.

I put them on a plate with other kinds of ripe wild strawberries and took some photos for comparison:
image.jpg
Surprisingly, the texture was not hard or crunchy but similar to the other ripe berries, especially the orangish ones -- soft but slightly firmer than the dead ripe ones. Flavor was extremely interesting. They were not dry-mouth astringent as I had half expected, but lemony, as my DD's best described it. Tart-sour with a background of sweetness you get in lemons.

(BTW in the top picture, you see the berry with green seeds on the visible side? That one had the least flavor out of all of these.)

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pinksand
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That's so interesting! They do look very much like the pineberry strawberries! Their flavor is usually described as pineapply so maybe that's like the lemony flavor you described? It's so strange that they're growing from the same plant though... maybe some kind of mutation?

Delvi83
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Location: Italy

Common strawberries are normally hybrids....look here

https://ilgustodellanatura-blog.blogspot ... sp_23.html



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