wild strawberries

Question

I’m from the hilltowns of Albany County, New York. My mother (and the kids) and the neighbors used to pick pails full of luscious wild strawberries. They grew in weedy fields, along road cut banks and were easy to sit in the field and just pick. There are none like that anymore. What happened to those old fields of strawberries? Too much lime?

Answer 1

Likely this is caused by the build up of residue from human activity. Oil from the streets, along with the many other types of buildup can occur from heavily populated areas. If your area has been growing rapidly, then this could have had an impact on the availability on the plants. It would be hard to say without taking soil samples, exactly, what happened to kill them off.