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Time to Think about Your Seed Needs
Within the last couple of days there has been a spike in emails and phone calls about seeds. The most asked question to date is whether our seeds are GMO. The answer, we signed the safe seed pledge which means that we do NOT sell GMO seeds. All of our seeds are open pollinated and are not hybrids.
We do sell some heirloom plants that are hybrids but none are GMO. They are propagated vegetatively which means by rooting their runners, so they are not open pollinated.
A couple of notes about seed availability and price. So far we are holding our prices or offering better prices and more discounts than in the past. We don’t know how long we’ll be able to do this. Some of the seed is now grown here in Delaware but a still significant amount is imported. The U.S. dollar is weaker than it was a year ago but we are pretty well stocked up right now. We likely will have some shortages as the season goes on, especially for seed we produce.
One other factor affecting availability is a significant increase in demand for seed from outside the U.S. Several species and many of the selections we offer are not available at all or to any great extent off shore. This is especially true for Fragaria virginiana and many of our F. vesca selections.
We are still making the transition from plant production to seed production. If demand for seed continues to increase we will likely significantly reduce our plant production and sales. Many of our customers are either garden centers or growers who grow for garden centers. With shipping costs being what they are it’s probably for the best if we ease back on plant production. It will be much more economical for gardeners to buy plants locally than to have us ship them across the country. It comes down to shear economics.
One last point. Most strawberry seed takes about 14 weeks from sowing to first fruit if grown in a range of 65 to 75 degrees F. This knowledge will help you to plan your sowing and also your seed purchases. Seed can be stored in a freezer prior to sowing and actually should be frozen for at least a month before sowing. All strawberry seed that we ship is already preconditioned and ready to sow. If you get the seed early or if you are a distant international customer who has to wait up to a couple of weeks to receive your order, freeze the seed until you are ready to sow to help optimize germination.
Why Grow Wild or Gourmet Strawberries?
I frequently get asked questions like this: “We have a family of 4. How many alpine strawberry plants should we plant to be able to supply our strawberry needs?”. At first blush this question seems simple. Take the strawberry needs of 4 people and divide by production per plant. Right?
Not quite. Alpines, like most gourmet types of strawberries, and are not grown and sold by the quart. We Americans want the highest yielding whatever. It is obvious with strawberries that the flavor and aroma is not a consideration. Quantity wins.
Did you ever think about why portions of French dishes are so small. Americans don’t feel like they are getting value with such meals. I’m paying what for such a small portion? If you look at the size of the portion without tasting it you probably do feel short changed. But the value in French food is the taste, the experience, not the quantity.
If you are looking only at quantity, go buy a quart of strawberries in the store. During the summer when my alpines were not producing much because of the heat, I finally gave in to the temptation to buy a quart of strawberries at my local grocery store. In fact, they were selling them two for the price of one. Wow, what a bargain. They looked great. Huge unripe berries. In the final analysis, they were not a bargain. I ended up feeding most of what I bought to my worms. Pretty expensive worm food! There was very little aroma. Just enough to get me to buy them. The taste was horrible. The crispiness of an apple. Even sugar didn’t make it much better, just tolerable. Yes, they had strawberry flavor, afterall, they have most of the genes of strawberries. I was very disappointed and felt that I wasted my money.
So, what’s the answer? I think the only choice we have as consumers is to grow our own if we are looking for food that tastes good. And more importantly, if we want to be able to control what our food is sprayed with we must grow our own.
This has become the mission of The Strawberry Store. We are bringing back heirloom varieties. Many of these varieties were pushed out of the marketplace because their yields could no longer compete with newer varieties. Some fell out of favor for other reasons such as susceptibility to pests or that they don’t ship well. If you are growing them in your backyard, why do they need to ship well?
I heard from a strawberry breeder recently that he is not interested in working with varieties that don’t have all of what they now consider desirable characterics such as shipability, size, yield, etc. It is becoming more and more clear to me that these breeders are breeding strawberries that will at some point turn the tide. More and more consumers want to grow their own for some of the reasons already mentioned. If the flavor continues to be sacrificed for size and yield, at some point people will stop buying the fruit at the store like I have. If enough people get fed up with the lack of value then breeders are going to have to start reconsidering their positions.
We hear frequently from customers that they are happy with the heirlooms. Many customers are buying and planting varieties that we are reintroducing and testing themselves for characteristics important to them. The home gardener is now becoming the breeder in a way. They are selecting varieties that give them what they cannot buy at the store. Some are even becoming amateur plant breeders. They are planting the seeds from the strawberries that they grow and selecting their own varieties. In the 1800’s, this is how new varieties were introduced. Home gardeners were the plant breeders of that day. I think in some ways plant breeding is coming full circle. More and more are unhappy with the selections being introduced by professional breeders and are making their own selections. These selections are not solely based on yield. Flavor and aroma are a part of this selection process. And, a lot of the fruit picked gets eaten right in the garden. Who needs varieties that can be shipped thousands of miles when they are not shipped even one foot - they’re eaten on the spot or within 50 feet of where they are grown. This is the reason our business exists, and is thriving.