I have so many DGers to thank for plants now making themselves at home in our garden, but right now there's one plant in particular that has far exceeded our expectations. In fact, if Jill hadn't given me a pot of this plant when we visited her last summer, I never would have thought of it: alpine strawberry. If you don't mind my windiness, following is a link which shows just how much this plant has to contribute to its neighbors and surroundings and garden: http://davesgarden.com/forums/fr.php My post is dated June 5, 2006.
Thanking Critterologist
Hmmm, can't make that link work.... But I'm glad the alpine strawberries are doing well for you! I have a double row of them now along the side walkway leading to the deck. They make a wonderful border, and just this afternoon I picked the very first ripe one! YUMMMMMY! It was much bigger than usual, too, so I wonder if the berries maybe get bigger as the plant gets older?
For any who haven't tried them, alpine strawberries are wonderful. The fruits are tiny -- unless you have unusual patience and a large patch of them, you'll never pick enough for a pie -- but the flavor is unsurpassed, like eating strawberry candy. They are also pretty easy to start from seed, although cold stratification is usually necessary. I wintersowed some last year, and that worked pretty well!
I gave my brother a couple of plants in a big pot last year, and this spring they are huge & full! The pot is sitting on the front porch of their new house, looking especially lush since they don't have any grass yet. The kids are eyeing the blooms and small green berries.... they find it SO hard to wait for the berries to ripen; I think most are eaten at the pale pink & sour stage!
The big surprise for me was that as a design element, alpine strawberry is a first-class edger in that it adds to or complements or improves the looks of anything behind it. The foliage is so good that it can be trusted in long stretches of path edge to be used as a "unifier" - especially for horticultural pack rats like me.
And then, there's that "old-timey" flavor that alpine strawberries bring to a garden. In literature,
"Colette tells us in ''Sido'' she was awakened at 3:30 A.M., and ''off I would go, an empty basket on each arm . . . in search of strawberries, black currants and hairy gooseberries. . . . I came when the bell rang for the first Mass. But not before I had eaten my fill, not before I had described a great circle in the woods . . . and tasted the water of the two hidden springs which I worshiped. . . . The first spring tasted of oak leaves, the second of iron and hyacinth stalks.''
excerpted from: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2DF1031F935A15757C0A961948260&sec=travel&pagewanted=print
I've only been able to find quotes and references to Colette's writing pertaining to her childhood in 19th century France, but have always greatly appreciated her style.
Love the quotation!
Could you try posting that link again, please, or point me to the forum & subject of the thread? When I click, it takes me to a page that just says "Replying to a thread."
Critter, here's that thread:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/596498/
It's in the Seed Trading forum, Sheran's Red, White and Blue Seed Swap
Hope it works. I also hope those seeds can be germinated if sown now. My thinking was based on the principle that many seeds, if sown as soon as they ripen, don't need all the various techniques to get around germination-inhibiting enzymes needed when sown later. So, there's 2 hurdles here: 1) did soaking 3 days in water to separate seeds from berry set the seeds back? 2) will sowing immediately after ripening make germination easier?
Hopefully, some DG folks will let us know what happens if they sow the seeds as soon as they get them.
Just tried the 2 links - second one works. Dunno wut I did wrong the first time. Thanks, Critter.
I love your descriptions!
I have saved & successfully germinated seeds from my alpine strawberries, but the seeds were on some dried up, end-of-season berries... I just scraped off the little seeds and put them in the freezer for a couple of months.... I would think your method should work fine, though.
You mentioned the Viola labradorica on your thread -- the clump you gave me came back beautifully this spring! It's actually quite near the alpine strawberries, in the corner of the side walkway. I'm also really enjoying the colorful foliage of the ajuga from you that I planted around in that bed... and your astilbes came up nicely under my Butterfly J. Maple, too! Everywhere I look, I see plants that you've shared with me. Thank you for your generosity -- and even more, thank you for your friendship! You're a gem.
Gee, Critter, you're very welcome. Right now I feel more like a lower primate that just fell out of a tree than a gem - hardly know where to drag my knuckles right now. Trying to keep up with my 70 year old DH on the trail and then coming home to a compliment quite knocks the sense out of me.
Critter, following is what I've done with some of your thymes and herbs you shared with me last summer. This will be windy, but the thymes vary so much in appearance and growth habit that perhaps this might be useful to someone - as well as some of their plant associations.
You are going to have to come see what I did with all those thymes and herbs you swapped with me. Their garden is among the stones of the old well - just out the back door, and long ago, DH extended the stone retaining walls from the well further along and into the hill. With our clay soil and humidity, thymes (as well as dianthus species and low-growing campanulas) are transmogrified by growing among stones from the pitiful to the majestic.
Your thyme 'Yellow Transparent' has draped itself in a lovely, golden sheet over a low stone wall just in front of a juniper cascading downhill. That thyme has the constitution of gill ivy, but more mannerly and attractive. It contrasts with another sheet of violet-blue campanula porsharskyana peppered with volunteer dark purple johnny-jump-ups lower down the hill along the same path.
Across the path from 'Yellow Transparent', your caraway thyme grows very timidly (but what a flavor!) as does your orange thyme (or was that one 'Hot and Spicey'?? - cannot find last year's notes). It doesn't look like they're going to overwhelm the gray santolina (from cuttings from Studeley) sharing the same edge of wall any time soon. Hopefully, using the parsley and basil for the kitchen will keep them from trouncing these thymes and santolinas. A salvia leucanthemum is lurking in the back of this bed.
Some other thymes with spectacular fragrance we acquired this spring are oregano thyme and lime thyme from Stillridge and T. 'Lemon Mist' from Behnkes - all very vigorous, green mounding growers (a lower, mat-like green and gold variegated lemon thyme slinks along the path edge below 'Lemon Mist' - not as fragrant, but nice). Shade and light will pull a thuggy oregano forward down the hill away from them, and a clump of chives in between gives nice vertical contrast to these mounders. A small clump of dill 'Bouquet' (seed also from Studeley) hopefully will give a little ferny contrast in the middle - any ideas it may have of flopping over its neighbors hopefully will be squelched by twiggery of brush stuck among it.
A very elegant, more airy, upright thyme with woodier stems and a kind of gray, glaucous finish to the leaves is Provence thyme from Behnkes. A lot of turpentine there, but the character speaks too distinctively of what I imagine the Mediterranean to be like to ignore. Cuttings of it and itself are in a semi-circle around flat stones edging a small pool where the well was. On the ends of the curve are rosemary 'Salem' on one side and French lavender on the other side. Across the pool, French taragon and winter savory grow up through stones with just the right weedy touch to keep it from being too formal.
Silver thyme (upright, mounding) surrounds another bed. I stuck cuttings under jars in early May which I just lifted. They rooted, but things are looking bald right now with most greenery from zillions of tiny weeds from the compost I used there. Small, volunteer seedlings from an inky black coleus are inside the circle, forward of rose 'Gruss an Aachen'. Other herbs interrupting the silver thyme circle at 3 points of a triangle are the woolly and silvery peppermint scented geranium (which has cascaded downhill for me in the past), as well as the culinary Salvia officinalis and a "raspberry-purple" Salvia greggii.
And, then, there's the very vigorous, hugging-the-ground, gray, woolly T. 'Hall's Woolly' that has fallen over its wall with much grace that you gave me - very pretty blue-pink flowers. On another wall is the even more silvery, woolly and flat T. lanuginosa with a similar vigor which I hope will cover an exposed pipe from the well soon.
There is one more thyme. It's a looser, more etheral, woolly, silvery thyme than T. 'Hall's Woolly' and T.lanuginosa which have a tighter ground-hugging habit. And has flowered the most spectacularly of them all. DH was immediately captivated by it at Stillridge when he saw it. It was so beautiful, that we neglected to give it the sniff test. Since this is a family website, I can't use the words to tell you how awful this thyme smells - it's called Cat thyme. I thought of taking it right back, but DH loves unusual plants, so it now resides among its more sweetly scented kinfolk. Wouldn't you know that there's nothing wimpy about Cat thyme's growth habits.
Welp, if y'all are still reading this, thank you. And how 'bout sharing herb combinations you've liked, too? Being able to grow and contrast different members of a genus in such a small space (about 10' x 10') on a transverse slope has been a lot of fun with thymes - and I never would have thought of it if not for an encounter with a certain Gandalf of plant traders - you know who.
WOW! You sure have "the touch" to have transformed those little clumps into cascading sheets in such a short time!
Initially, I had the Translucent Golden and Caraway thymes planted alternately along the front walk, and the contrast created a striking checkerboard effect, but the Caraway Thyme was eventually overrun.
I did have some Spicy Orange Thyme (I think) last year from BlueKat, but it doesn't look like any made it through the winter. If you got 'Hot & Spicy' anything from me, it was probably Oregano! I've got several nice cultivars of Greek oregano growing for the moment in as big windowbox with Hall's Wooly Thyme crowding around under it. I really love the French Thyme you mentioned -- that's our favorite cooking thyme! We got 'Provincal' (I think) this year and also have one that I think DeBaggio's just called French Thyme.
Your new varieties sound luscious, especially the Lime Thyme! I got a couple more creeping thymes this year too, but would have to check the tags for their names.... hmmm, perhaps we will have to do a little swapping later on this summer when our new plants have started spreading!
I've been planting clumps of different creeping thymes around the edge of our back patio. You're right about the fun contrasts between different varieties! I can't remember if I gave you any of the creeping thyme I grew from seed last year.... it gets 6-8 inches tall, more of a flopper than a true creeper perhaps, but the foliage and taste/aroma remind me of English thyme. I got the seeds in a trade with no name other than "creeping thyme" so that's all I know. At any rate, it is interplanted with some Phlox subulata, and has completely filled the space between one of my big rocks and the patio. Maybe I'll move some out to between the irises, where I've planted some starts of C. porcharskyana and Lamium 'Orchid Frost'. That siberian bellflower was on my "most wanted" list this spring, and I found some at a nursery during a visit with family in Boston -- I should have known to check with you, LOL!
I think Mazus would mix well with the creeping thymes also and provide a contrasting texture as well as some different blooms. I got a nice clump in a trade but may have managed to kill it... I think I've decided that trade plants all need to be potted up and babied along for a while on my deck before planting out... at least, I seem to have much better luck than with planting out right away, no matter how tough the plant is supposed to be.
That's about it off the top of my head.... sorry to be so disjoint... it's late, and I'm tired, so I'm off to bed!
Encouraging remarks about the alpines. I have a few that have never done well (were in pots for 3 years) and now in the ground at Molly's in FL. She will send them to me in time to get them in the ground before winter, assuming they survive the FL summer!
I just took this picture of the alpine strawberry plants bordering my side walkway. Some of these plants I grew from seed last year and others were transplanted from another bed, but all of them were planted last fall. There are a bunch of little species tulip bulbs ('Little Beauty') planted under them, and that combination works really well.... by the time the strawberries started greening up & growing, the little early tulips were pretty much done.
I think I'll get in the habit of wandering down here from the deck with my morning cup of coffee, seeing if I can find a little berry or two for a morning treat.
