Strawberries - I give up!!! Help needed in an odd way

[teakdesk]

Our garden which we got 16 years ago is plagued by a strawberry weed.

Every bed is full of a wild strawberry that forms ground cover each year, getting into every nook and cranny as well.

We've weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded but they still return.

They have very small berries that are lovely to eat mixed with other fruit but it takes hours of back breaking work to pick enough.

So...

... if you can't beat. join them....



Is there a cultivated strawberry that we will be able to plant that will get cross-fertilised so we end up with a "weed" with a larger fruit?

I realise that the new "seed" plants will suffer but if the weeds get a fruit in between the two sizes I'll be very happy!!!!


Any chance??

[Two_Sheds]

It's not creeping cinquefoil then? I have that and it's spreading rapidly despite regular weeding

[Nicos]

So- you've tried weeding then?

I'd have thought it would be fantastic to have this groundcover- acts as a sort of barrier against evaporation- and at the same time producing food for wildlife- and you when you feel like it!

I'd have thought trying to cross it with larger fruiting plant would encourage larger leaves too? Would that annoy you?

We see tiny punnets of wild strawberries in the market for a few weeks in the summer- very expensive!- I'll have a spesh look out tomorrow.


Do they grow well in rockeries? ( I'm just thinking I might try and germinate a few of the seeds to try and get your 'problem'!!!!)

[WrexTheDragon]

I have a small area for wild strawberry. The idea was that it would keep the blackbirds off the blueberry, strawberries, raspberriers. But no it does not.

The more I pick the wild strawberry the more fruit it produces. I have picked 125g every day for the past eight weeks and what I don't eat I freeze for the winter. I like the flavour of these over the cultivated ones.

Yes mine also throw up loads of runners and it is amazing the places that I can spot the rouge plant. It is easy to pull them up as they don't have a good root system.