Learning about Strawberries

Last year we built a strawberry pyramid to start growing strawberries as a family project. We planted about 20 starts, some in the pyramid and some in a pot. Between drought conditions and the birds, only one plant survived in the pyramid but the pot (which I watered more judiciously) did very well. Instant science experiment!

Fast forward to this year…we transplanted a few plants from a neighbor and replanted some more starts.  With the cooler spring, we are having much better results keeping the new plants alive.  In fact, we have all the stages of the strawberry plant to observe for our nature study time.

A new strawberry start

All stages of strawberry flowers.

The center cone growing into strawberries and a runner shooting out

After reading in the Handbook of Nature Study on pages 608-611, we studied the leaves, flowers, seeds and roots of our plants. We took our nature journals out to the strawberry pyramid and sketched the different parts.

Below you will read a little something that each of my “little berries” learned:

Raspberry: I learned that the leaves keep growing higher and higher than the last set of leaves so the crown gets taller.

Huckleberry: I learned that the different parts of the plant work together to grow the strawberry.

Blueberry: I learned that the center of the flower turns into a strawberry, and the green leaves on top of strawberries were once the outside leaves of the flower.

Strawberry: I love being outside with my brothers and sister!

Mother Gooseberry: (that’s me:) I loved planting a new runner in the places where the starts did not survive.