Kitchen Garden Forum

The memsahib has just bought the above strawberry's from local supermarket. Now under orders to grow some for next season, trouble is unable to find same in most of the on line catalogues. HELP

Hi SM

Tell her some b......'s patented them!

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/PP14771.html

Forgive my ignorance and naivity but how on earth can you patent a plant which gives off runners every year and ensure that the buyer doesn't take advantage of nature to get themselves some new plants?

Primrose wrote:Forgive my ignorance and naivity but how on earth can you patent a plant which gives off runners every year and ensure that the buyer doesn't take advantage of nature to get themselves some new plants?

Like this, apparently........

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/PP147 ... ption.html

I'm obviously going to have to go back to college to requalify before I'm able to understand all that, although I'm sure any bureaucrat from the EEC would be able to comprehend it immediately.

Can't help wondering whether there would be a big market for these kinds of plants, given the cost involved in breeding them and whether the average Joe Bloggs would notice any difference between it and any other variety of strawberry. Perhaps it's only the commercial growers who can see some advantage in it.

Hi Primrose,
The answer is that nobody can stop you taking runners from a patented Strawberry if they are for your own use but the patent is to prevent a commercial grower taking runners and selling them under that name and thus depriving the originator of the Strawberry his plant dues.
JB.

Johnboy wrote:Hi Primrose,
The answer is that nobody can stop you taking runners from a patented Strawberry if they are for your own use but the patent is to prevent a commercial grower taking runners and selling them under that name and thus depriving the originator of the Strawberry his plant dues.
JB.

Which is why poor old Mrs Shallot will never get her plants in the first place

I know this is another silly question then, (and I'm not proposing to do it) but wouldn't it be possible to save the seeds from the strawberries, dry them, sow them & reproduce them that way? (I assume the seeds are the little pips on the outside of the skin?)

I was given a packet of strawberry seeds last year which I've not opened because I imagine it is a bothersome way of producing plants when you can simply grow them from runners (if you have some). Has anybody ever actually grown them from seed and how long does it take to get viable plants?

Hi Primrose,
That Strawberry is very hybridized and once you have a trial going and plants are matured propagation would be only by vegetative means. It is possible that the only person that has seeds is the originator.
As for Mrs Shallot well sadly I suspect that it is a commercial venture and no propagation permitted under the terms of the sale. Normal for American trade!
JB.