Freak Strawberry Sighting: Update

Sprouting Strawberry When I posted the photo and story about the freakish Strange Seeding Strawberry the other day, a lot of people asked what was going on and commented that they’d never seen anything like it. But no one could shed any light on the mystery.

See, typically strawberry seeds need to overwinter (a.k.a. freeze) in order to germinate. Having them germinate on a strawberry that was still attached to the plant seemed more than a little unusual.

Well, I’m all about local so I decided to give our very own Driedeger Farms, a local strawberry farm dating back to the mid-1940’s, a chance to weigh in on the topic.

Rhonda responded to my query asking a few identifying questions that I couldn’t answer about what kind of strawberry it was. “Uhm, a red one” was about as specific as I could be.

In the end Rhonda did her research online and found me an article on how to grow strawberries where the comments below referred to strawberries being planted in soil and sprouting that way. I appreciate that, but it was a bit disconcerting that the strawberry expert relied on eHow.com, even more so when her parting comment was, “It was definitely interesting to see them in their ‘natural’ state.”

I can cut Rhonda some slack given that strawberries naturally propagate via runners and on a 65 year old farm it’s not likely they’ve needed to rely on seeding in quite some time.

But it still doesn’t explain why a strawberry that has neither been frozen nor planted in soil, sprouted on the vine.