Aquaponics - Vivipary strawberry propagation fail

It looks like my absurd strawberry has pretty much failed to do much of anything except go all floopy, and look a lot more like earth than it did a few days ago..

I was (of course) hoping it would change the world in some enormous way, but alas it was not to be.

On the up side, a few of my very healthy normal strawberry plants are actually doing quite well, and have started to send out yet more runners, so "normal" might turn out to be a pretty good approach after all.

I think This might be my first post without a photo, so given the strawberry has turned to what looks like earth, I'll post this pic in place of anything meaningful.



120 Things In 20 Years thinks  the world might have slipped back into normal mode when it comes to strawberry propagation.

Aquaponics - Strawberry propagation

I found a new way to propagate strawberries. Or at least it's new to me. The secret is to have the seeds sprout while it's still on the fruit.

Although I would have liked to leave it alone to see if they would all grow by themselves, the fruit is almost rotten so I thought it would be better to pick it and plant them all.

It came from a dirt garden so there was a lot of risk of it being eaten by things before they had a chance to grow.

I planted it into my aquaponics system.





From what I could see, all the seeds had sprouted.

I have no idea what conditions were required to make it happen or if they will actually end up growing, but the original plant was a modern lab created thing that didn't produce runners. Or almost didn't. From around 60 plants I think I've seen two runners in two years.

120ThingsIn20Years thinks the world is odd.

Aquaponics - Strawberries

Yum.

I love strawberries, and spend way too much money each year in keeping the fridge stocked.

I cant get enough of them.

Here are some free strawberries  from the backyard.









Some are from the aquaponics system, and some from the dirt along the side of my house.

I planted a stack in one blue barrel grow bed, and a stack more in the ground along one side of my house.

The strawberries grown in the aquaponics system are always bigger and juicer. They also look better. Always big and perfectly formed. But I'm not convinced they taste any better. In fact I think the ones out of the ground may actually taste better.

When growing grapes for wine, I understand you don't want too much rain as this makes the fruit bigger, but lowers the amount of sugars per lump of grape.

Or so I'm told.

This might have something to do with why the strawberries seem to taste better out of the ground. The ground strawberries get watered once a day when it's hot, and every couple of days if it's not.

The aquaponics strawberries have as much water as they want when ever they want it.

Or...

It could have nothing to do with that. I cant be sure which went where, but there were two batches of strawberry plants. One batch was fully grown mature plants, and the other batch were all new runners. I seem to remember planting the runners in the aquaponics system because they were smaller, and I wanted to see if they would catch up to the others. But I also remember not doing that. I remember mixing them up so I would get a sample from each. I remember a few other contradictory things as well.

So... possible that they taste different.

But I think it's going to prove to be water content.

I think I'll do some experiments with the runners from both batches to see if there is any difference when all plants are the same age. Both beds are producing runners, so I think I should know within a few months.

Another thing to try, might be to change how long the aquaponics plants have wet feet. I should be able to control very precisely how much water the plants are exposed to.

I have an electric tap from a sprinkler system, so I might try to make some kind of moisture sensor, and perhaps try letting their roots get almost dry before giving them more water. I have no idea if such a thing is even possible, so I'll find out.

Or...

It could be that the strawberries don't taste as good when they are hot. Very few of the fruit ever make it into the house. Most get eaten straight from the plant, and there is a huge difference between the temperature of the narrow, protected side of the house, and those grown in a hot house. Now that I think of it, I think strawberries grow well in places like England. I'm not sure if England is called England or not, but that place that's sometimes called England seems to be the kind of place people grow things like strawberries.

Perhaps a hot house makes the fruit taste different.

I'll have to find some more information.

I'm being very fussy here.

All the strawberries from my back yard taste much better than anything I've ever bought from a shop. Shop strawberries are always under-ripe, and seem to be made of something other than strawberry.

That's store bought on the left, and back yard grown on the right.

Even with this poor photo, you can see the difference.

I can also smell the difference.

And if you drop a store bought strawberry into a clear drink, you get a strawberry in a drink. But the back yard ones colour the clear drink strawberry colour.

I count aquaponics and dirt grown strawberries as a total success.




120 Things in 20 years - I think I'l buy a second hand digital SLR camera so I can take better photos of strawberries and.

Aquaponics - Strawberry runners

I cant tell if the reason the surviving strawberry plant fruited so well, and so deliciously, because it just happened to be thriving, or if it's more suited to aquaponics in some way.

Most of my strawberry plants died, but I suspect the one that did survive was one of those I pulled from my original grow bed. If so it may have survived because it had an enormous root system, where as most of the others were store bought when they were transplanted, and had roots that didn't quite make it out of the cups they were in.

All of them had roots that touched the water in the end, but having a huge root system might have stored some water during those 4 times the water was off. Some of them spent 4 days in my bathroom sitting in a dry bath tub.

Lucky for me the one plant that did well is sending out runners. They seem quite healthy, and if it did thrive because it's extra suitable, I'll at least have some more to go on with.




















120 Things in 20 years not just one plant hanging on by the skin of its teeth, but actual aquaponics strawberry runners!