The sun is shining and spring is here.
I have been thinking about my garden for weeks now and planning out what to plant in my greenhouse. I have never had much luck starting plants from seed, but I am always willing to try. Especially since I get the gardening bug in February or March and start itching for summer.
This year, I decided to try strawberry plants from seed. It is proving to be more difficult than any fruit or vegetable seed I’ve ever attempted.
I bought seeds from a place in the province that promised these strawberry plants were good for our northern gardening zone. I followed all of the instructions precisely.
According to the package, this variety may benefit from cold stratification (refrigeration) before sowing. So I placed the seeds in a moist paper towel in a sealed bag and refrigerated them for about a month
Then I filled a seed tray with seed-starting mix and sowed the seeds thinly, pressing them into the mix. I barely covered the seeds with soil, because I was told they need light to germinate.
It took weeks.
I almost gave up, but then little tiny green sprouts emerged. It gave me hope. Not very many, but enough to be excited.
Some went mouldy, some never sprouted at all. But I think I started them too late. They are currently very, very tiny. They look like mini curly parsley plants. So very small, not even an inch above the soil.
I will still plant them outside when the risk of frost is completely gone, but I am very doubtful I will be getting any strawberries from them this year.
But I suppose you don’t really know. Maybe that is why I enjoy gardening. It isn’t always easy and there are often factors outside of your control, but it is rewarding when things work out.
This type of strawberry plant is said to be a perennial, so there is also hope it will pop up again next year and maybe have a better chance to grow fruit. I might plant these little seedlings next to some more mature plants that I will buy from the greenhouse so I can see the difference and still enjoy strawberries this year.
Someone recently gave me a tip to keep the birds away from berries. I was told if you paint rocks that look like strawberries and place them all around before your strawberries emerge, birds will peck the rocks and give up quickly and leave them alone.
I think this will be a fun project for my children and I to do together this weekend. They have a weird obsession with finding and collecting rocks and also love to paint. I like art with a purpose, so this project will be fun and useful for us. Good luck to all the gardeners this spring and feel free to pass along your strawberry growing tips!
