I've started many, many alpine strawberries from seed and my experience is similar to yours. They grow VERY slow in the beginning. In fact they don't really start to grow much until I put them outside into the garden bed. After that, they seem to speed up a lot. I still remember the first time I transplanted a batch of them outside - I thought that there was no way these tiny little things were going to make it, but most of them do survive.

How are you both germinating your Alpines? What month do you start and put them out? I have some seeds but so far no luck even with bottom heat.

Thank you for the reassurance, backyardener! Nice to know I've not been doing anything terribly wrong to them - time for some of them to go in the cold frame, it seems.

kandm - I can only tell you what I've done this year as I have had no experience in growing them before, as mentioned. I planted my first lot in the last week of January on a cool windowsill. When they didn't seem to be going anywhere I planted a second lot of seeds which had spent a fortnight in the freezer. After a week (three weeks for the first lot) I started to get my first seedlings from *both* sets and even now (8 weeks or so later) I'm still getting a couple of stragglers popping up.

Everything I've read about alpines suggest adding heat might have a negative impact on germination - they are supposed germinate best in quite cold conditions. I also made sure (as suggested on various sites) to keep the soil moist at all times.

Hope that helps you any - good luck on getting them going!

I don't do anything special to germinate the seeds. I just put 4 or 5 seeds in each cell and keep the soil moist. I don't use bottom heat. They are pretty slow to germinate and grow very slowly until outside. I start them at the beginning of March and transplant outside mid May (exactly the same times as for my peppers).

Once outside, how much shade do they tolerate? I noticed that they grow in the woods, so they must be shade tolerant. I have a shaded bed which has ferns and LOV, and my wife would like some strawberries.

I started a bunch of alpines in January and just yesterday transplanted them to larger containers. Most of them are around 1 to 1 1/2 inch tall, with some that are closer to 3 inches tall. I noticed that they had more roots than I had expected from such small plants. They're supposed to take off once you transplant them, so here's to hoping.

Glib: They like full sun to part shade. They will produce berries in part shade, but they'll be leggy and won't produce as much as they would in full sun.