We had a vacant lot across from our house on Jennings Street in Beckley, WV. It had a fairly steep incline, and it became our sledding course. We set up ramps and jumps and spent hours and hours of winter fun.
In spring, there were a few apple trees which we visited each fall but in spring, there were tons of strawberries, just growing wild. We rifled through the high grass and picked hundreds juicy red-ripe berries. Somehow, they were the sweetest of all.
Strawberries are actually pretty tough customers. If one plant survives, it become two, then four, then spread throughout the area.
A have a tiny strawberry field underway in the upper part of my garden. A neighbor gave me one of those strawberry pots which holds about a dozen plants. I put it in the garden and the vines spread and now I have an area devoted to strawberries, and they prosper in that part of the garden which doesn’t get a lot of sunlight.
Strawberries enjoy world-wide fame. They are hearty plants, but botanically speaking, they are not a true berry but a fruit meaning that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant’s ovaries but from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. Each apparent “seed” on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the flower, with a seed inside it.
The first garden strawberry was grown in Brittany, France, during the late 18th century. Prior to this, wild strawberries and cultivated selections from wild strawberry species were the common source of the fruit.