Here at the nursery we’ve been growing, tasting (lots of tasting!) and selecting strawberry varieties for years, so that we can provide the best ones for Colorado gardeners. This year we’ve added a new one called Pineberry. It has a tropical sweetness, reminiscent of pineapple, hence the name. When pineberries are ripe, the seeds are red but the rest of the berry is white or pale pink!
This color is kind of a camouflage for the berries, so the gardener has a chance to get the to them before the robins. Robins love strawberries! I don’t mind sharing with birds, I love having them here, but I like to have some of the crop, too!
If you click on the Opening Day Spring Schedule tab up above, you can see that our drawing on Friday, May 8, is for a Berry Delicious Garden–and this berry is included! We don’t have a huge number of them, so we’re limiting them to one per customer. Like most strawberries, they spread by runners, so starting with one plant will lead to a nice patch!
Did you know that garden strawberries are a native American crop? All the strawberries that we eat today are the result of a cross between the Virginia strawberry and the Chilean strawberry–a North American and a South American hybrid–that was first found in a garden in France in the 1700’s. There’s your garden trivia for the day!
Strawberries are easy to grow in a container or a garden bed. They like sandy, loamy soil; if you have clay, add organic matter to loosen it. They need plenty of water when they’re producing, so if you have everbearers that means watering through the summer. June bearers don’t mind going a bit dry after harvest.
