“Old North Sea” strawberry. Selected my favorite berries and ate all the rest! Looking for some more varieties to cross these with. Yum, yum!
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Niiiiiiiiice! That’s so many! You must be delighted. 
Approximately how many plants gave you that many? I’m wondering what I can expect with mine later this year.
Ooooh, a strawberry landrace! I’ve been wanting to start one. I’m glad I’m not the only one hoping to. I want mine to be everbearing, super sweet and flavorful (duh), productive, and I’m hoping I can train them to be at least a little drought tolerant. What are your goals for yours?
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Hi Emily,
I started with only 9 plants and that was around 5 or 6 years ago. I have lots of clonally propagated plants now. I think they are ready for some new mates! My goals are to introduce new genetics in order to encourage diversity and of course large, sweet berries are nice! I’m more attracted to strawberries with firmer flesh so that they can be stored a little longer. If I could produce enough I could bring them to market. I have never seen fresh strawberries at market in my area!
These ones are the everbearing variety “Old North Sea” originally from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds. They grow very well for me. I need to find other varieties that can survive our winters. I’ll likely try to find them from other gardeners in my area. Seeds are not widely available and oddly enough, even though strawberries grow very well for us there aren’t any nurseries selling AK grown crowns! They are all shipped from out of state and people are growing varieties from California that won’t winter over then purchasing new crowns every year!
So, another goal would be to offer Alaskan grown perennial bare root strawberries to local gardeners so we can depend less on supply chains. 
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Selecting for nicest strawberries is the best job ever! YUM!
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What works well to sprout strawberry seeds for you? So far, I’m finding sprouting them indoors is the only way I can get them to germinate (they’re so tiny), but I’d prefer to be able to direct sow them!
I have very good success indoor this year on a heat mat in a covered container like a transparent recycled take out container. I ‘m trying several different varieties of alpine strawberries and several are already sprouting after a week. I used to have no success outdoors with them in years past so I’m excited!
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It sounds like I should keep sprouting them indoors, then! I seem to be able to get them to sprout as long as I keep a humidity dome on top. My sprouts have stayed really small for four weeks, though. I wonder if they need more root space, or more fertilizer, or something else? My grow light’s pretty strong, and they aren’t leggy, so I think they have enough light right now.
Come to think of it, maybe if I direct sowed strawberries outside with a sheet of plastic on top, that might keep in enough moisture to germinate them? That may be worth trying when temperatures are warmer!
I have had success using plastic jug winter sowing for strawberries, but that is the only approach I’ve tried.
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I have only grown alpine strawberries from seed so far & suspect they like the natural light much better. I struggled with growing healthy plants under lights inside, then the following year I found a shriveled up berry in my garden, crumbled it onto some seedling mix in the greenhouse and they came up with great vigor and good health. I’m well practiced at starting indoors because of where I live but some things just do so much better outside and I think strawberries are in that category. Also, strawberry seeds do like to be cold stratified from what I’ve read. I’ve kept mine in the freezer for the last few months for that reason. This year I will wait until it is warm in my greenhouse and start them out there. I’ll let you all know how they do…maybe I should do another test though. Some indoors and some outside just to get more experience?!
@UnicornEmily, maybe you are right about the fertilizer? I always start in plain seedling mix so tiny sprouts don’t get burned then transplant into something with a little bit of nutrients. I use 4 parts sunshine mix to 1 part worm castings for all of my seedling transplants.
I keep my box of seeds in the refrigerator year-round. I do this to extend their shelf life, but I realized last year that it has the lovely side benefit of automatically cold stratifying anything that needs cold stratification. Yay!
I have an amazing strawberry patch. It produces buckets of fruit all season long, and it starts to bloom as soon as the snow has melted. I used to lose half or more of the plants over -40 F or colder winters but now most the plants survive. There are many varieties in it, many grown from seed, but one variety that it has is called Toklat. Toklat Strawberries are grown and breed in Delta Junction, Alaska.
The easiest way that I have found to grow strawberries from seed is: After the snow melts, look for strawberries that were left on the plants from the previous season. Pick the fruit. Tear it into chunks and plant. They will germinate with a few weeks.
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I agree, that has worked best for me too. Awesome about your strawberry patch!
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That’s a great idea! Thank you!
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Just jumping on the strawberry bandwagon here, but have a question in regard ro seed saving. How did you clean them out of the strawberry pulp and get them so clean? Did you just rinse and squish them with water? Or so you do the fermenting thing like people do with tomatoes?
We just went and picked several pounds of berries from a local farm and while cutting and trimming them for jam I saved the cut off bits. Fresh strawberry jam is the second best thing after fresh strawberries!
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I have a different method for saving seeds of strawberries. The seeds are on the outside of the skin. What I do is use a sharp knife and shave as thin as possible strips of skin off a berry I am saving seeds from. These skins I place wet side down on an absorbent paper towel. The towel goes on top of a plate and then the entire plate goes uncovered onto my refrigerator for one week. The refrigerator both desiccates the remaining moisture in the skin strips and cold stratifies the seeds. After one week I place the paper towel into a bowl and with a new craft popcicle stick I scrape the seeds off while holding the paper towel in place on the bottom of the bowl with my other hand. I can either sow the seeds right away using whatever germination method I want or store them in a seed packet in the refrigerator until needed.
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I’ve seen people use blenders. Then they let it settle for a few minutes. The seeds sink to the bottom and pulp floats to the top, so it’s easy to pour off the top (I would drink it as a smoothie, personally 
) and then rinse the juice off the seeds at the bottom and dry them. I’ve been thinking I’d try that with strawberries, and with other fruits that have little itty bitty seeds.
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Oh, that’s a clever way to go about it! Thanks, will have to remember that for next time!
This time it was all the squishy/ going bad paired off bits and they are probably too thick-ish to dessicate easily, so I will try washing them through a little tea strainer
Thanks, the blender is agreat idea! For fresh berries that does totally sound like the yummiest way to do it!
That’s what I thought when I saw someone do it!
Saving seeds from the icky bits you would otherwise just throw out (or, more likely, compost) is a great idea, too. The blender approach would probably work well for that, but of course you wouldn’t want to drink the slurry, and you’d want to wash it out well afterwards.
Let us know how the tea strainer works! I like good ideas!