Fragaria virginiana
Origin: Millville, New Jersey
Improvement status: Wild
Seeds per packet: ~20
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
EFN INTRODUCTION. We're beyond excited to be finally offering seeds of the extraordinary 'Holly City' wild strawberry! Wild strawberries may be small and a bit fiddly, but they are the best-tasting strawberries in the world — and this particular variety happens to be one of the best: delicious, resilient, and sometimes even yielding pretty large fruit for the species (see photos). These seeds come from a patch established by EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman at the EFN flagship farm outside Elmer, New Jersey. Early in our tenure in South Jersey, probably in 2016 or so, Nate found some wild strawberry plants growing in Millville, New Jersey, near the Wheaton Arts & Cultural Center (which celebrates the region's history as a center of glass production). The strawberries were growing in extremely sandy soil, which is typical of the area (and the reason for South Jersey's longtime glass industry).
Nate took the handful of small strawberry plants back to the farm early in spring and planted them under the shade of a beloved rhubarb seedling (a 'Glaskins Perpetual' seedling he'd been lugging around even through his nomadic years, during which it spent one winter in a pot on a shelf in North Philly!). He thought little about them until a few years later, when he realized they'd spread upwards of thirty feet from their original location, and seemed to be thriving. At this point, the most productive part of the patch covers a plastic pool-liner we long ago put down at the edge of the field to provide a weed-free staging area. Despite summer's heat, drought, and a near-total lack of soil fertility, the strawberries have taken over this pool-liner, taking root in every fold and crease where even a half-centimeter of dusty soil has collected. And they produce a bumper crop of the most delicious wild strawberries each and every year.
We chose the name 'Holly City', after Millville's official nickname, because it's indicative of the habitat in which these berries thrive: the same sort of sandy Pine Barrens soil where American Holly trees thrive. Growing naturally in basically straight sand, it's no surprise they require little to no fertility to produce a crop. So if you're looking for a reliable, resilient, delicious wild strawberry to add to your landscape, look no further!
GROWING TIPS: Strawberry seeds should be cold-moist stratified for 30-60 days in the fridge, then planted atop a moist sterile growing medium (a peat-based seed-starting mix should do well) and placed in a warm spot. Alternatively, you could plant them in a flat in the fall or as late as midwinter and keep outdoors. The young seedlings are small and delicate, so treat them with care. Once a few compound (three-lobed) leaves are present, the plants can be transplanted to their permanent home.
