Strawberry Seeds
All About Strawberry Seeds
Strawberry seeds grow on the outside of every strawberry. Many times people wonder if they could remove and plant the seeds if they could grow strawberry plants that produce strawberries.
This is actually a very interesting question. First of all, to remove the seeds from a strawberry all you need to do is blend it in a blender with one cup of water. The strawberry seeds will all float to the top. Take the seeds out of the blender and lie them on a paper towel in a warm spot until they have dried.
The other half of the dilemma does not have such an easy answer. You can take the seeds and plant them in nice, rich planting mix as you would any seed. A couple might produce plants but most probably will not. And, of the plants that come up, even if the plant grew to normal strawberry plant size, it most likely would not produce fruit or at least edible strawberries.
If you were well-versed in plant biology, you might know what to do to get one of the strawberry seeds to grow and produce strawberries. But it isn’t so easy for the home gardener. When strawberries grow in the wild, the plants are either male or female, one or the other. For a strawberry to grow the male plants have to fertilize the female plants. The pollen is carried from one plant to another by the wind.
The strawberry seeds that came off your strawberry came from strawberry growers. They have developed plants that self-pollinate. The big word for these kind of plants is monoecious. The trouble with these kind of strawberry plants is that they produce nice-looking and great tasting plants but their seeds do not produce clones of the parent plants.
If you are still determined enough, however, you can grow your own hybrid strawberries. All you have to do is buy several different kinds of strawberries (ones that you like, of course) and plant them directly into your outside garden. The flowers on the different kinds of plants will cross pollinate with one another and made a new strawberry, one that will look like a real strawberry and taste good. This will take some experimenting but eventually you could have strawberry plants producing juicy, sweet edible strawberries.
The rest of the planting and growing is just like for any other plant. To get your seeds started, place them in a tray of soil and keep it moist. When the plants have a couple sets of leaves thin them to be about three inches apart or put in individual pots. Introduce them to the outside temperatures gradually by putting them out in the sun for a few days before planting. Prepare your beds and move them into the garden. The first season you will need to pinch off the flowers as soon as they form so the plant can grow good roots. Mulch them for the winter. Don’t let them get frosted in the spring. And then see what happens!