Instant gratification

Today I took a short break from planting and yard work to taste the first home-grown alpine strawberries of the season. This variety is perennial and everbearing, which means two things: The berries return every year with minimal effort on my part, and they keep coming all summer (that is, as long as I continue to pick—otherwise the plants think that the season is over and start to go dormant). Two great features to have in a garden plant, if you ask me!

Alpine strawberries are known in gourmet circles as fraises des bois, a high-priced delicacy appreciated by foodies the world around (e.g., read an article by Maine four-season gardener and author Barbara Damrosch—you must register to read the Washington Post online, but it’s free). Chez moi, however, alpine strawberries simply are easy-to-care-for plants that give good eats.

Because the sweet, tasty fruits are small (you’d need to pick dozens just to fill your palm), hide under leaf cover, and tend to dry up quickly after harvest, they require careful hand harvesting—hence the hefty price tag. Given these difficulties, I find that the easiest approach to alpine strawberry harvest is to eat them in the garden. Yup, you heard me: plant to mouth, with only the lightest, briefest passage between the fingers. Gratification doesn’t get much more instantaneous than that.

Another nice feature (IMO) of alpines is that they don’t send out runners like full-sized strawberries; however, as the plants grow, you can divide their clumps to expand your strawberry bed or border.

One more interesting tidbit about my plants: They are true survivors. I originally sowed organic seeds from Johnny’s several (5?) springs ago, in black plastic seed flats. However, when I was putting the rest of the plants in the garden, the strawberries looked so tiny and pathetic that I figured they needed more time to grow and should be planted in fall rather than spring. So, I left the flats outside near the garden and watered the spindly seedlings (occasionally, anyway) throughout the season. Come fall, I got busy and never got the plants in the ground, so the flats were left, forgotten, next to the garage. There they passed the winter under several feet of snow.

The following spring, as I was weeding, prepping the garden, planting tomatoes, and so on, I caught a glimpse of something green among the dried-up leaves in the flat. Not believing that anything might have survived a New Hampshire winter in a plastic seed flat—and certainly not the sad strawberry seedlings that I had chucked aside the year before—I guessed that the green must have been from a growing weed, like a maple tree or some crabgrass. Still curious, I examined the greening leaf more closely, and sure enough, it was a strawberry leaf—and many more plants were starting to green up! So out came the water and a bit of seaweed fertilizer, and before I knew it, the plants were looking perky. A short time later, I transplanted the baby strawberries to the garden, where they have thrived ever since.

BTW, if you’re interested in reading more about organic farming and gardening … check out Four-Season Harvest by Barbara Damrosch’s farmer husband, Eliot Coleman, at your local library. It’s a classic! Also check out their website, Four Season Farm, to see that they practice what they preach.