Types of Strawberries, which is right for you?
The grocery store strawberry is actually a hybrid of two different North American varieties: the Virginia strawberry and the Beach strawberry, or fragaria virginiana and fragaria chiloensis, respectively. While every continent besides Antarctica has several of their own native strawberry varieties, these two varieties of strawberry were chosen to be bred together to create the much larger, albeit less flavorful, grocery store variety. There can be many different ways that strawberries can be categorized, but this post will primarily talk about growing habits, june-bearing vs ever-bearing, and colors. We will then dive into what these differences mean for your garden!
The two types of strawberries that were hybridized to create the grocery store strawberry demonstrate the two main ways that they will grow. The Beach strawberry grows in the way most experienced gardeners are used to; with sending out long runners that will then root and become a new plant. This type of growing pattern is also how the classic '“strawberry patch” is formed, or how you may have found a few strawberries from your neighbor’s patch. Strawberries that grow like the Beach will also typically go dormant during the winter and then create fruit the following year, the runners will typically not fruit that year. This type of strawberry can be further classified as “June-bearing” or “ever-bearing” depending on when they fruit. June-bearing will produce all of their fruit in one flush and will typically be larger and with more flavor. Ever-bearing varieties will typically produce smaller fruit throughout the season. Either way, due to their spreading nature, it can be difficult to grow this type of strawberry in a container. You may have seen those strawberry towers that allow you to grow a lot of plants in a small square footage, but after a couple of months it is likely to get unruly with runners.
The Virginia strawberry does not send out runners and will instead stay in a small clump. This type of strawberry will often be referred to as an “alpine” strawberry due to their affinity for growing at higher elevations. The fruits of alpine strawberries are almost always much smaller, often the size of a large blueberry, but will have incredible flavor. The lack of runners can allow for some very nice versatility in your garden. While they can just as easily be planted in the ground , they can also be grown in containers, or even inside on a windowsill. Despite their small size, I tend to find that they are rigorous ever-bearing producers and each plant will give me several a day. The plants of alpine strawberries tend to be less hardy in the winter, but will readily self-seed to make up for it. However, alpine strawberries can be dug up and “split” like any other clumping-style plant, but will still have the usual caveats of planting strawberries.
The next, and probably more interesting, point to bring up with strawberries is color. Yes, there is more than just red! While not an incredible array, you can find any color from reds, whites, and yellows. The seeds can also be any of the same colors as well. There are even some varieties of white strawberry with red seeds! This color change also comes with a surprising added benefit that helps with one of the greatest problems strawberry growers face: resistance to squirrels and birds. How is that possible? Because they are assuming the white and yellow strawberries aren’t ripe! Be warned though, when they are at peak ripeness they will still reek of strawberry! This little camouflage allows you far more time to get to the strawberries before nature does! This color change also comes with a change in flavor. You’ll find that white/yellow strawberries have less savory notes but far more citrus and pineapple notes. The pineapple flavor makes naming strawberries confusing, as this is also why many white strawberries are called “pineberries”. This is why some gardeners will use pineberry, white strawberry, and alpine strawberry interchangeably.
What does this all mean for your garden?
Well it means that anyone has options to be able to grow the humble strawberry! If you live in an area without much pressure from nature, you can grow standard red strawberries. Too much pressure from nature? Grow a white strawberry. Have either a large space taken over by the plants or able to keep up with regular trimming of runners? Then you can grow a variety with runners. Have no space outside? Grow an alpine variety in a container inside on a sunny windowsill or under a grow light.
My personal favorite is to grow alpine varieties in hanging pots to keep the squirrels away and the birds usually won’t find a place to land. They just look very pretty. Pro tip on the small alpine strawberries: In the fridge, they will lose half of their water content overnight but will freeze perfectly!
Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something,
Jeremy
