In south central Texas you need to set out your strawberry plants the later half of October. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find plants that time of year. I realize store bought berries are always hybrids but it seems quite a few people have success from seeds they collected from hybrid tomatoes they've grown. I'm curious if its worth my time and effort collecting seeds from grocery store strawberries and growing those out. Anyone have experience with this?

Well, not from grocery store strawberries, but I grew 2 kinds from purchased seed last year, and I'm growing those 2 plus one more variety from seed right now. It just takes a long time and the plants are very sensitive when they are small, you can't overheat them or let them dry out, they are tiny. FWIW I just read the other day that the accepted germination rate for strawberry seeds being sold is only 60% min.

PS The ones I am growing are not June-bearing, but Alpine and day-neutral.

Setec Astronomy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:02 pm Well, not from grocery store strawberries, but I grew 2 kinds from purchased seed last year, and I'm growing those 2 plus one more variety from seed right now. It just takes a long time and the plants are very sensitive when they are small, you can't overheat them or let them dry out, they are tiny. FWIW I just read the other day that the accepted germination rate for strawberry seeds being sold is only 60% min.

PS The ones I am growing are not June-bearing, but Alpine and day-neutral.

Which day neutral varieties did you grow? How were they for taste and production?

I grew Elan from seed, which is a hybrid I bought from Johnny's. They were very good taste-wise, hard to tell on the production since it was the first year and I only grew 3 plants. Everything I have grown so far has been in containers, although most of the seedlings I'm growing right now I plan to put in a garden bed, probably for the chipmunks, but we'll see if they leave some for me.

Close to 20 years ago I tried sowing seeds from a few overripe store bought strawberries. Germination was well under 50% is all I remember. That, and that I started them (surface sown?) in a large pot, about 15" in diameter. I had many seedlings growing throughout the season. I overwintered the large pot in the unheated garage. I checked on it the first warm day of early spring, and some critter had chewed down all of the seedlings.

"Wild" plants of likely hybrids pop up around here quite a bit, as it's a favorite food for many birds. These wild ones are small, but pack a punch of semi-sweet to sometimes sweet flavor. They are not as juicy as the large cultivated ones, but if I had to choose between them, it's the wild ones for me.

Many appear to suffer from leaf diseases (no fruit problems), perhaps due to no watering, infertile soil, and sometimes not enough sun.

Tormato wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 6:00 pm I overwintered the large pot in the unheated garage. I checked on it the first warm day of early spring, and some critter had chewed down all of the seedlings.

Oddly enough, when I started growing strawberries a few years ago, I had to buy 25 bare root plants which was way too many for the "strawberry bag" I intended them for, so I put some in all the old pots I had hanging around. Come winter I put the bag and one large pot in the garage, expecting all the ones outside to die. Come spring, the ones I had left outside were fine, in better shape than the ones that spent the winter in the garage, which wound up getting kind of dried out.

This year I am growing strawberries from seed first time. I started Rainbow Treasure seeds in mid January and after transplanting the tiny seedlings to 4" pots they started to grow fast. Couple of them are flowering and I have pollinated the flowers with a paint brush. The plants which have no buds yet have started to grow runners and I have used a piece of metal wire to secure those on top of the soil to root. The seed packet had 13 seeds and 10 of those germinated, which is quite good.

About a month ago I sowed seeds of Yellow Cream alpine strawberries. From 21 seeds 9 have germinated and the plants are small. We have a lot of wild red alpine strawberries growing on our yard and I thought that these would be nice addition to grow next to the red ones.
Originally we had the wild ones growing only on one spot on our yard and our son used to pick them. He used to throw the "ugly" ones to my flower bed next to patio and in few years that flower bed was taken over by the strawberries. I did not mind that since only flowers, which grew there well were daffodils and during summer it was too dry for other flowers. I have now let the strawberries to grow as ground cover on a dry gravel slope. These alpines are hardy and drought tolerant.

I have seen pictures of collecting strawberry seeds from berries by a potato peeler. That would be an interesting experiment to do to see what kind of plants grow out of them.

Sari

A potato peeler! Why didn't I think of that? I used a pocket knife, and was warned to whittle outside.

Rumor has it (catalog blurbs) that birds don't go after the yellow strawberries very much.