I tried blogging a number of times. It seems that I always run out of time. This time I'm going to make an effort to stay at it.

I've been growing alpine strawberries for over 20 years. Over the years I ran into many authors making the same statement about alpine strawberries being cute little unproductive ornamentals. At first these statements seemed to be true. I followed their advice and planted the plants close together - 6" apart. The yields were disappointing. Just a small handfull of fruit from a row of plants.

I even tried growing the plants in a greenhouse in vertical tubes. I won't go into the details here, but I found that they will grow in these systems but again, the yields were disappointing. By chance I planted a plant in a half barrel that had been vacated by a tomato plant.

The results were staggering. This one plant quickly filled the barrel with it's unground runners (stolons). As the plant grew, so did the yield. I tended to pick berries every time I walked by the barrel. You see, I was hooked on the taste and fragrance of this special fruit. The fragrance itself brought be to the half barrel. Anyhow, no single picking was impressive but the plant just kept producing, even some in the summer. I lived in South Jersey at that time which can get hot in the summer. The barrel happened to be under a huge tree. Now I understand that this was a huge advantage.

The plant in this half barrel produced for 5 years. Production did seem to dwindle. I started looking into a reason. With a little digging I soon realized that the soil was depleted. In fact, it was virtually all roots. That's why I needed to water nearly every day. There was no organic matter left. Fertilizer helped but it was time to divide. Long story short, I divided the plant and got nearly 100 divisions. This was perfect because I had run an ad in "Fine Gardening" and virtually all the plants were sold within short order.

My background is in research. I received a M.S. in Entomology and worked in research for a large chemical company. In 2004 I decided to try to finally answer the question that I had about production. How much could one plant actually produce? By that time I had collected over 20 varieties of alpines. By chance I had plants of several of these varieties and a large raised bed to which had been added spent mushroom compost.

I decided to plant a single plant of each of the varieties that I had in this bed. I gave them more space than they could possibly use - spacing was about 24". The next spring I picked the berries from each plant. I weighed and counted them. I did everything I could to maximize production. I even put bird netting over the plants to protect every berry.

The results of this test and others are in the process of being compiled and analized. The short story is that the most productive variety produced over 450 berries and nearly a pound of fruit for the spring season only. Two varieties had statistically similar production. The other varieties were statistically different (less production).

A couple of studies since then have taught me a lot about testing this species. Without getting into all of that I'll get to my reason to blog here. The picture above introduces the 2009 trial that is now setup. I setup a concrete block raise bed grid - what a mouthful. This bed was setup in late August 2009. Each grid has now been planted with two plants of each of 12 varieties of alpines. My next entry will provide some of the details including the varieties. Until then .....