Hi Julianna - Of COURSE I'm interested in what you're growing! This "bright shade" situation is most interesting and will require experimenting. I started this thread LESS than a month ago and already I see a difference in the number of hours the back of my balconies get sun. On the same token, the sun spots for the items hanging off the balcony are also lengthening. Right now, due to the containers I used for most of my succulents being bulky, they've been placed to the back of my patio where they get a brightness all day long (bright shade, as you called it) but direct sun is for but an hour plus a day? I have to wait and see how these do moving forward... This is balcony 1 -- the one with full sun up front. I bought a bunch of those white balcony pot hanging thingamagics -- and it's pretty useful. It's smaller than balcony 2, but deeper. What's not shown is that further in to the left, you have two shelves full of plants--where most of the succulents are as well as my infamous gardenia, which Purple has been helping me with, haha. This was taken moments ago and today is a bit stormy and cloudy but it's still bright out there at 3:30 pm. This is balcony 2. It's significantly wider with about 3-4 feet MORE to the left than is shown here; that part is obviously full shade. The remainder is all less full sun than balcony 1 and in the afternoon, it quickly goes into no sun as to the right of this balcony, the building juts out with an overhang to the lobby area below. That seems to block out the sun instantly. Unlike you, my area requires me to bring in virtually nothing as we rarely hit 40* and if a plant's lowest tolerance is 50* (which is basically our entire winter) -- then either I don't get it, or it evolves quickly, haha. Thank God, because my house is full enough with houseplants -- I need outside plants to come in like I need a hole in the head. I was browsing some ferns yesterday! Are they hard to grow? I have a Venus Maidenhair here inside, but I don't believe I've ever had ferns in my yard. In the past when I had homes, I've usually had full sun and have much, much less experience with shade plants. I'm messing with the idea of hostas and I'm definitely getting some coleus and begonias, but on balcony 2 - where most of my shade gardening would be -- you can see that the depth of the balcony is minimal; putting large pots out there means no walking area. This puts a damper in my idea of creating cascading containers w/ spillers, etc. I might have room for... uh, ONE. After all of this, I'm of the mindset to move back to a house, haha. I find myself driving around town and looking at homes to figure out, "Is that yard facing south? No, wait...east?" It's sad, really!! Your post is missing photos. I'd love to see!!!!!!!!!!!! -Grace.

I have only one Alpine strawberry that I started from seed and it's going into it's 3rd year. Mine did produce fruit the first year from about July. Last year it produced plenty of small super sweet berries unfortunately slugs ruined many of them. Mine is in full sun and prefers LOTS of water. I haven't done anything special in the winter.

I did a lot of fragaria vesca last year, and they did very poorly for me. I put them out in feb in zone 5, so they got plenty of cold... and they sprouted almost last, and those that did sprout, were weak and perished soon after. out of an entire packet of probably a thousand seeds... i got probably 20 specks of a sprout, and not one survivor. HOWEVER... I have a pot of established alpines already, and when the fruit gets too ripe and falls off, i just push them down into the soil- they take a while, but there are tons of sprouts in the pot. Maybe the seeds need to be fresh? And PS they were germinating through the course of one season, so i do not think they NEED cold. I am either going to try one more time this year if i can get inexpensive seed, or i will just buy some small starts of the varieties i want- and propagate them from fresh seeds.

Thanks Yvonne! I was just figuring out how to get there (or who to hit up for a drive) when my collegue told me she had found some at the Karma Co-op in the Annex! It's a small organic food co-op, and aparently they have lots, You and I were ahead of the trend :) Very excited, let's hope we get lots of cute berries :) Sal