GARDENING : Home-Grown Alpine Strawberries Taste as Good as All Outdoors : Partial sun, occasional fertilizer and regular watering will result in a lavish harvest.

If you’ve ever eaten wild strawberries fresh from a mountain meadow, dripping with juice and sun-ripened, you’ll never forget the exhilarating flavor. If you haven’t, you can grow your own Alpine strawberries in garden or container and savor their unique taste.

Alpine strawberries are quite different from standard strawberries in flavor, size and in growing requirements. Known in Europe as wild strawberries, they are a very expensive gourmet treat and are served in Europe’s finest restaurants. They are much smaller than regular strawberries, and their flavor is closer to that of a raspberry than that of a typical strawberry.

Unlike their strawberry cousins, Alpine strawberries do not require an area of the garden that receives full sun. Four or five hours of sun per day is ample, and they do poorly in hot sections of the garden.

Landscaping Tool

Not only are Alpine strawberries a culinary delight, but they also are a most attractive landscaping item. Their foliage is a lighter shade of green than standard strawberries, and they form bushy 10-inch plants that are covered with pretty, white blossoms and deep-red or yellow fruit.

When the berries form, they have a wild-fruit aroma that is absent in regular strawberries. They also differ from standard strawberries in that they don’t form runners. They are beautiful plants to grow as borders in flower beds.

The fruit of Alpine strawberries is slimmer, more pointed and only about a third the size of typical strawberries. Once established, Alpine strawberries will bear year round, with the heaviest crop in the spring.

Alpine strawberries can be grown from seeds or transplants. However, they are very expensive when sold as transplants. One mail-order seed firm offers 25 plants for $26.95. If you use seeds, more varieties are available to you.

You can sometimes locate seeds for Alpine strawberries in local nurseries. If not, Burpee Seeds, 300 Park Ave., Warminster, Pa. 18991, offers seeds for two superior Alpine strawberry varieties.

Alexandria produces a profusion of beautiful white blossoms and a bountiful crop of small, pointed red berries on bushy 10-inch plants. It is an old, reliable variety. Ruegen Improved is a newer variety with slightly larger berries, which are produced prolifically.

Any Time of Year

Alpine strawberries are perennials, but their production falters after the fourth year, when they should be replaced.

In our Southland climate, you can start seeds for Alpine strawberries at any time of the year. When you receive your seeds, plant them in pots indoors in a sunny window for subsequent transplanting into your garden.

After the plants have grown to a height of 3 inches, they are ready to be planted outdoors. Before you transplant the plants, harden them by exposing them to the outdoors gradually--a few hours each day for one week.

Plants should be transplanted into a soil that has been enriched with organic material and a dressing of a general-purpose vegetable fertilizer. The plants should be spaced 6 inches apart and watered when transplanted. Then they should be irrigated on a weekly basis and given a side dressing of a fruit or vegetable fertilizer every four months.

Alpine strawberries make a very attractive addition to a patio or balcony when they’re grown in containers. If you go the container route, use a commercial potting-soil mix or make your own.

Mix one-third builder’s sand with one-third peat moss and one-third compost or well-aged manure. A time-released fertilizer should be added, and container strawberries should be fed a liquid fertilizer monthly.

Plant in Containers

You can plant one dozen Alpine strawberry plants in a large container such as a half whiskey barrel. Make certain that there are adequate drainage holes in the containers. Just about any type of container is suitable.

A large container known as a strawberry pyramid can be purchased at some garden centers and from mail-order seed companies. It is circular and consists of three rings made of aluminum. The bottom ring is 6 feet in diameter, with two smaller rings stacked on top in pyramid fashion.

Each band is 5 inches deep, and the pyramid contains a built-in sprayer that will connect to your garden hose. The pyramid will hold up to 50 plants.

The fruit is ready for harvest when it has an intense wild-fruit fragrance. You won’t have to bother about stems when you’re picking, because the fruit separates from the calyx with very little effort when it is fully ripe.

Forget about saving excess seeds from Alpine strawberries because they lose their germination potential very rapidly.