I must remember to plant some strawberries this spring

[Bernard]

In Los Angeles, a strawberry – yes, one individual berry – is selling for $19.99. The berries are flown in from Japan, and Erewhon, a luxury grocery store, claims they’re so popular it’s hard to keep them in stock.
...
The $20 strawberry did not concern him, but the coming effects of Trump’s tariffs did: “A better sign of the fall of the American empire will be when [in a week or two] a pint of strawberries is $12 at the mid-market supermarket,” Kulikowski told me.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/mar/15/viral-strawberry-erewhon-los-angeles

[pique]

Good plan! Strawberries actually do well in my garden zone. So, I'm going to do this also.

[wtg]

I’ve had some regular and some alpine strawberries in my garden for the last couple of years. Despite my efforts to deter them, I think the birds and squirrels get most of the berries.

But there’s nothing like the homegrown varieties that are so much better than the styrofoam berries sold in grocery stores. They don’t keep well at all, but they are so delicious.

[pique]

You need bird netting. And make sure you heavily mulch around the plants with dry straw to keep slugs away.

[wtg]

@pique

The squirrels defeat the netting. I would have to go to the next step and build a cage around the berry plants.

I’ve redirected my energies and now I focus on the red gooseberries. Yields are fantastic compared to what I get from the strawberries. And they are almost zero effort.

I just hit the local farmers market and get my strawberries from them.

[Bernard]

I grew strawberries a year or so after I moved here and they did really well the 2nd year (as to be expected). Unfortunately, there was hanky panky going on between my strawberries and the wild ones in the field, and thereafter the "cultivated" ones started producing much smaller fruit.

Now I have a few strawberry jars, not that it will matter unless I get a greenhouse or something to protect them from polinators.

But I'm going to grow some anyway.

[pique]

The nice thing about strawberries is they do very well in planters, so you can grow them on a porch or a deck, where they may be less susceptible to marauding critters.

[Big_Al]

My grandmother tended the strawberry bed on the farm where I grew up. A job I had when I was little was sitting at the table where we had berries for sale and collecting the money from the customers.

I recall that "Midway" was a variety of strawberry she particularly favored. I believe they're still available.

Big Al