A berry in every pot

Louisiana is hot and humid. It’s great for lizards, for alligators and for crawfish.

Without air conditioning to control the humidity, fungus, mildew and moss would grow in our houses. Fungus is among us. It’s everywhere. And it grows on strawberry plants, too.

Louisiana is famous for its strawberries. In 2009, 89 growers cultivated nearly 400 acres of strawberry fields—most of them in Tangipahoa Parish—and picked 870,425 flats.

But most of us will never try to grow our own strawberries. That takes patience, dedication and knowledge. No, we get them in supermarkets, from roadside vendors or at farmers’ markets.

Local horticulturist Michael St. Angelo wants to change that. Not only does he want a chicken in every pot and a good five-cent cigar, he wants a blooming strawberry plant on every condo courtyard and back porch.

On the surface, the strawberry is a good choice for a potted plant, because the berry flower has both boy and girl parts and can pollinate itself with just a gentle encouraging breeze. Strawberry plants don’t even need the birds and the bees.

St. Angelo is experimenting with several varieties of strawberries in his front yard, his side yard and out back, too. Pretty much his whole Baton Rouge property is dedicated to one kind of horticultural endeavor or another. There are roses, banana trees and sweet potatoes. Now he is looking for a new jack strawberry plant that can withstand something much tougher than the snows of Kilimanjaro, the Santa Ana winds and the desert heat of the Mojave. He’s looking for a berry that can survive Louisiana fungus.

A certified nursery grower, the 65-year-old has more than a thousand strawberries planted in pots.

“I’m planting my strawberries in pots because a homeowner might like to have a few strawberry plants on their patios,” St. Angelo says. “I started with some plants I bought in Ponchatoula, the Camarosa, Chandler and Monterey—varieties that commercial farmers grow in Louisiana.”

He says his strawberry plants can grow for years in the same pot. So what’s the problem?

It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.

“The humidity is so high in Louisiana, and leaf disease is so prevalent,” he says. “That’s why the local commercial growers buy their plants from California, Michigan and Canada. We don’t grow strawberry plants here because of the disease problem.”

St. Angelo spends his time trying to figure out which strawberry varieties can live in a pot without being overpowered by leaf, root or fungus disease. He’s trying out Quinault, Surecrop and Tri-star, Tribute and Mesabi varieties, among others.

As the weather warms on this spring day, no sign of leaf disease yet, but the fungus has arrived.

“If I can find the plant that is disease-tolerant, that will be the Louisiana homeowner plant,” St. Angelo says.

Is there such a plant?

“Probably not,” St. Angleo says matter-of-factly. “And I’ll show you why.”

He walks over to a tunnel house, an apparatus constructed of PVC pipe taped together in the shape of a snowboarder’s half-pipe. The half-pipe is covered with a nylon twine netting to keep birds and raccoons out. He points to pots containing the Quinault variety.

“These are supposed to be resistant to leaf disease, and they are, but they are getting it anyway—just not as prominent as the others,” he says.

St. Angelo could easily spray his strawberries with a mild fungicide, but he’s not growing the plants for the commercial grower. He’s growing them for the average Joe.

“[He] doesn’t want to spray fungicide,” St. Angelo says.

Undeterred, St. Angelo will continue his search for a little while longer, he says. If he doesn’t find his perfect potted strawberry, at least he had some fun.

The average urban dweller is not exactly scientific when it comes to gardening, so this strawberry specialist’s success would be our success, too. We need guys like Michael St. Angelo, because they will do the planting, the weeding, the fertilizing, the fungicide application and the harvesting.

We will do the eating.