Buying strawberry plants in japan

Now here in Tokyo we are in strawberry buying season. I keep seeing they sell little plants almost everywhere, in the supermarkets, at little stands in the street, flower shops, and of course the garden center.

My new strawberries

Since I needed to buy some new strawberry plants to replace my old ones that died, I was more than happy to take one afternoon to shop around and see what o could get.

I find very interesting how they do marketing here in japan. They have a very specialized kind of approach. For example when I went to buy my tulips, they had a very nice display and everything was set up to help you get what you want and also a nice shopping experience. So this time, when going for strawberries I had a lot of expectations about how they will do. Luckily I was not disappointed.

They had a lot of strawberry varieties

When I arrive to the garden center, their main display was, of course, the strawberries. They had set up several tables outdoor for their display. They had a large selection with many variety's and different types, even some special kinds that I didn’t know existed. Among the most interesting were; a variety that has peach flavor, one that blooms with pink flowers, several white strawberries, one that can give fruit as big as 8cm, and many others.

Because there was so much to choose form I was having trouble and getting confused about what to get. Also I don’t know that many about strawberry varieties, so I could not pick a specific one that I know would be good.

Fortunately among the information they had, there were some charts about each strawberry main characteristics. I used this ones to find what kind of strawberry I would like. The chart say which ones are easy to grow, big, sweet, big crops, etc. I found it very helpful.

One of the strawberry types and characteristic charts

They also had a lot of other growing strawberry related articles, all with a strawberry theme. They where specialized books, tools, fertilizers, planters and others. There was even a brand that does their packaging using a very funny strawberry shaped bag. I had seen this brand doing the same thing with tomato shaped bags, back on tomato season.

Strawberry soil and fertilizer

At the end I chose one that has big and sweet strawberries, one with big crop and easy to raise and also one ever bearing with flowers at bloom, you know to maintain the spirit of my crazy strawberry that gave fruit all the time. I hoped that would had me covered for next season.

Every variety had their own starting pot color

I got home and set them on their planter, where they seemed to be doing fine. Of course if you follow my twitter you know that is not the rest of their story, but that is for another post.

To honor my old everbearing a new blooming strawberry

The whole experience was very nice, I learned some new things about strawberries, saw something I had never seen, and had fun. I enjoyed buying for strawberry plants here. I still wish I could get more, but no more space in my little garden in japan, maybe next year.