Collecting Strawberry seed?

[CarolineSonning]

Hi all,
Is it possible to collect the seeds from strawberries?
I've been given the most unusual and fantastic fruits and before I eat them all I thought I might try to grow them.
Anyone any thought on what I should do?

[Lesley Jay]

Just a guess Caroline but maybe peel them and let the peelings dry out?

[quark1]

I've been looking for 'next-stage' advice but saw this thread.

I know its too late to advise the above method - but by now you've possibly found it does work. This is exactly what I did with one we enjoyed - OK a supermarket variety, Kent grown - but if left on the plant longer it may improve? - what is not such a bad taste/texture already.

Around 5-6 weeks ago I collected and dried some El Santa skins/seeds and cut the resulting pieces into 20 bits and have tried to germinate.

Wow - success this week - at least 5 of the cells are showing activity!

Could anyone advise whether the resulting seedlings will be OK in an unheated indoor environment over the winter? Hopefully producing a sufficiently reasonable juvenile plant to do the business next summer and beyond. Or have I really gone ahead too early and will have dead seedlings quite soon? I'm banking that in the wild they will either propogate via runners or seed and that dropped fruit would start before the winter starts.

[Alison]

Strawberries are hardy plants so I don't see why they woudn't be OK in an unheated environment but they'd probably like as much light as possible.

Just a query though, wouldn't it have been an awful lot easier to just take runners?

[quark1]

It would IF I had had plants - this was straight from the supermarket punnet!

I lost all my strawberries a few years ago - so thought I'd give this a go.

I'm rather into trying things from recovered seeds just now and will have nice healthy yr-old gojis for next year. There is the slimmest chance I could get a small number of fruits next year - but at least I have plants whereas many people have had to destroy theirs on the advice of DEFRA - a little overdone if you ask me. If they'd been kept separate from commercial or other toms/pots I reckon they'd have been OK.

Potato from seed is next!

Thanks for your reassurance!

[zazen999]

Hi
I usually just throw any insect eaten strawbs in the soil, and a while later they sprout on their own. If not in the strawb bed, they get potted up and will be going in the strawb bed when they have a few new leaves on them.

I'm planning a bed strawb bed for next year are onwards. I started with one alpine strawb taken from the one last strawb plant in a stately home we visited last summer and have grown from there. I buy them cheap, one lot I bought from co-op and paid 79p for 18 plants. They were advertised as miniature strawbs but have come on fine and are now fruiting. The bed is 1.8m square; so I should gt quite a few in - and have been saving runners and planting on - as well as any that sprout up around the place on their own. This year, I just put 1/4 of the bed over to them, so I'm quite looking forward to next year's strawb bonanza.

I find the insects/wild animals munch them and thus I get little seedlings coming up all over the place.

[louhar161179]

why have they got to be destroyed because of defra?

[quark1]

louhar - this link may explain - I personally feel that unless in close contact with commercial crops or other peoples' plants such as on an allotment the whole business has been rather over-egged - but if the warning didn't go out and there was a disastrous collapse of food crops DEFRA would have been on a loser.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/import/lycium.pdf

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2008/080430b.htm

[rae75]

hi i put some strawberries that were not worth eating, put them on some paper in window to dry out, and then i picked out the seeds. which was very very fiddly. im storing in envelope but will sow some shortly then sow rest in spring..nothing ventured eh