When My Obsession With Strawberries Began

In the late 1950’s my mother had a gigantic garden to feed her 8 kids in northern Iowa. The strawberry patch was 40 ft x 40 ft. I’m the oldest. I suppose that you are guessing that I’m going to tell you about the hours of backbreaking work I spent picking strawberries. Not so. I did nothing with the strawberries except eat loads of fresh berries on shortcake and canned jam on my morning toast. I was much too busy helping my dad with the 21 milk cows, 300+ hogs and 7,000 egg laying chickens and growing crops on 280 acres.

It took a while until I was again involved with strawberries. After graduate school in Entomology I took a job as Field development Rep with a pesticide manufacturer responsible for research in six midwestern states. When I joined the company they were preparing to submit a fungicide registration application for a fungicide whose label would include strawberries. I setup trials with universities to gather data and residue samples needed for the application. I saw first hand the intense spraying on strawberries which deserved their number one ranking in the dirty dozen. The dozen crops with the heaviest load of pesticide residues.

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I attended one of many trade shows as a manufacturer’s rep. This one was in Traverse City, MI. I met a family there that told me about the father “giving” an acre to each of his three kids to earn their college tuition. He set it up for them and planted strawberries on all 3 acres. We became friends and all three paid for four years of college with their acre. I was now intrigued by strawberries and the obsession began. I couldn’t wait to start growing strawberries to earn my fortune!

I left the chemical company and with my new wife and started a greenhouse business in NJ where we grew Easter flowers, geraniums and bedding plants. I converted a thousand square feet of one of my greenhouses to vertical growing of strawberries. Six inch sewer pipes with holes were supported by a wood frame and hybrid bare root plants were inserted. I don’t remember the variety. It was a june bearing variety vintage 1990. There was one major problem. A county agent helped me to figure out that it was boron deficiency. We did get a nice crop in the end. The probem was that no one back then would pay enough to make it work with fresh locally grown winter berries. They were being grown organically but that was of little value to consumers back then. Times are still changing!

We were always looking for new crops away from the dog eat dog world of commodity horticulture. I went to the library and poured through garden catalogs looking for the latest and greatest. Because of my interest in strawberries I ordered a packet of something called alpine strawberries not really knowing what they were. The cultivar name was ‘Ruegen’. Months later when I tasted the first berry I was hooked for life, no kidding at all. Still hooked after growing and tasting more than 200 varieties and cultivars from six species of Fragaria. I currently save and sell seeds of nearly 20 varieties and cultivars from my online store at https://strawberryseedstore.com/store.

The next post will continue the story of my obsession with strawberries.

We intend to publish frequently. We will talk about germination, growing methods we use, cultivars and varieties of Fragaria vesca and hybrids like Quinault and Fairfax. We have little known information on F vesca ‘Attila’ and much more!