Our Big Little Harvest

When we moved into our house we noticed plants that looked quite a bit like strawberries. I have been waiting to find out exactly which kind and it seems like we have a crop of wild strawberries. They are sweet, tart and flavorful little berries...very little berries; a pint container can probably hold more than fifty to seventy. The plants are beautiful, they have deep green rather large leaves that grow in an upright form that almost shade the flowers and berries that grow on shorter stems closer to the ground in clusters that may have as many as ten or fifteen berries on them, but they are not much bigger than blueberries or raspberries. The berries are lots of fun to pick, and very tasty. We have been picking them for a few weeks now, and really enjoying the flavor, but I do not think that we will have enough to do anything with them except eat them fresh. They would make an excellent jam if there were enough of them. The boys are having lots of fun picking them and eating them right out of the yard. My guess is that the previous owners used these plants as ground cover to keep the weeds down in the flower bed. I am hoping to keep them growing in the future and maybe add some of the regular strawberries also. They don't appear to grow in the same way as the regular strawberries, they don't seem to have runners so I am not too sure how to make sure that new plants will continue to grow. I will have to watch them as the season progresses to see if runners form.