North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<kbrubaker@nc.rr.com>]

The musk strawberries offered by Raintree Nursery and a few other sites are 
an interesting berry that I will give another try this year.  They live up to 
their description as one of the best flavored strawberries I have ever had.  

At the time, only the Profumata and Capron cultivars were available, now 
Raintree is offering a male musk strawberry plant this year.  I had bought 
one plant each of the profumata and capron and let them runner to expand the 
plot.  They grew to over 100 plants after the first season and filled a 
60'x4' bed after the second full growing season.  We had great crops those 
years, but then the next year all the flowers failed to form fruit.  The year 
after was the same so removed the patch.  I had assumed a disease was the 
culprit, or they suffered from a similar reduction in fruiting vigor that 
standard strawberries suffer from after a few years.  

After seeing the male plant offering, I realized I had also relocated my 
Tristar and Seascape patch further away from the musk strawberry patch the 
year that I saw the flowers fail to set.  It hadn't occured to me that the 
two varieties might not be able to fully pollinate each other.
*sigh*

Kurt 
Durham, NC