Until there's a perfect strawberry, try 'Seascape.'

Sunset, March, 1996 by Jim McCausland

This everbearing variety produces big crops of tasty fruit

Just as Jason and the Argonauts searched for the Golden Fleece, plant breeders have been striving to find the perfect everbearing strawberry - one that produces lots of great-tasting fruit over a long season. While their quest continues, a new variety called 'Seascape' demonstrates how far they've come.

Developed by breeders from the University of California at Davis, 'Seascape' is one of the most productive everbearing varieties yet. In Sunset's test garden, a bed of 'Seascape' yielded good crops of large berries with excellent flavor. Each cluster produces one extra-large berry (called the king berry).

Because 'Seascape' doesn't need much chill to set fruit, it's especially promising for mild-winter parts of the West. In cooler locations, 'Seascape' will probably flower so early that frost will kill its blooms and eliminate the early harvest. Later flowering and harvests won't be affected. If you garden in a cool region with a warm micro-climate, however, you'll probably have ripe strawberries before the first California strawberries show up at the supermarket. While 'Seascape' bears over a long season, fruiting is concentrated in late spring.

'Seascape' has good disease resistance but is somewhat susceptible to leaf spot.

PLANTING TIPS

Nurseries and garden centers sell 'Seascape' as bare-root plants. Plant right away in good garden loam. Strawberries don't like salty soil or water; if your native soil is alkaline, plant them in imported topsoil.

If you're tight on space, tuck plants into the sides of strawberry pots, where they'll bear fruit for months. For greater production, set out plants at 16-inch intervals in rows 18 inches apart. Apply complete fertilizer after new growth begins, then again after the first harvest. Spread organic mulch around plants to help keep the soil moist between waterings.

To get maximum berry production, pinch off the first flush of flowers so plants can direct energy into establishing a strong root system. You'll still get fruit the first year - just later. Early disbudding may help eliminate the monkey-faced berries that sometimes show up with the year's earliest crop.

LONG-TERM CARE

Strawberries are notoriously short-lived. Diseases build up in the plants over the years, causing fruit production to drop gradually. That's why commercial growers usually replace everbearing strawberry plants every year or two.

In a home garden, you can keep your strawberry patch going indefinitely by letting the mother plants (the first plants you set out) bear fruit and send out runners for two years. Then pull the older plants out, leaving the daughter plants produced by the runners. If you follow this pattern, you'll never have any plant more than 2 years old in the garden, and you'll always have new, vigorous, disease-free plants starting up.