By Andrea Yoder & Richard de Wilde
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| FlavorFest Strawberries packed in pints and ready for CSA boxes! |
Strawberries are in the peak of the season right now and
we are picking nearly every day just to keep up with the pace of their
ripening! We do not grow many fruits in
our valley, but we take pride in our strawberries and try to deliver the best
tasting berries possible. It is no small
task and requires planning in advance to make it happen. In fact, right now we are managing two
strawberry fields. We have the field we
are currently harvesting and we have a new field that was planted this
spring. We only harvest from a field for
two seasons before we destroy the field, but in order to have a continuous
supply of berries from year to year this means we have one year where we have
two fields to manage! So this week we
thought you might find it interesting to learn a little more about how we
produce these tasty little berries.
At Harmony Valley Farm, we use the “Matted Row” system of
strawberry production. This means we
plant bare root dormant strawberry plants in early spring. We source our plants from Nourse Farms in
Massachusetts. When they arrive they are
frozen and don’t look like much. Our
goal is always to get them planted as soon as we can after we receive them,
weather permitting. We space them about
16-18” apart and plant two rows on a bed.
The first year we do not harvest fruit from these plants, which are
called mother plants. While they will
produce blossoms, we snip them off to shunt the energy in the plant towards producing
daughter plants instead of fruit.
Generally the amount of fruit a first-year plant would produce is not
that great, thus it is more productive to forego the fruit and allow the plant
to become more established. The main
strawberry plant will send off new growth called runners. These runners will produce the daughter
plants that will set their roots into the soil thus propagating our strawberry
crop! As the daughter plants become
established the rows start to fill in and widen.
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| Freshly shaped beds with black drip irrigation lines coming out of the ends of the beds. |
Before we can transplant the strawberry plants, we have
to prepare the field. Despite the fact
that Richard has been growing strawberries for over 30 years, we continue to
find ways to improve our production system every year. In recent years we’ve started burying drip
lines under the beds so we have a way to deliver water and nutrients to the
plants. This can get a little tricky
because the lines have to be buried deep enough that they don’t get tangled up
in any mechanical cultivation equipment or get damaged by transplanting and
weeding crews. Their placement on the
bed and the depth of the placement need to be correct for these reasons as well
as others. In a drought year these
drip lines are crucial for keeping the field productive as we cannot use any
overhead irrigation
methods once the plants have started to set fruit.
In order for a field to be productive and
efficiently managed, we need for all the pieces of production to come together
in near perfect alignment. This year Rafael
got innovative and used his experiences and observations gleaned from previous strawberry
field challenges to create a modified implement. He
calls this new tool a Canoe Shaper and we used it this year to prepare the beds
and lay the drip tape. The purpose of
the shaper was to prepare straight beds for planting by shaping the beds and
laying the irrigation drip tape all at one time. This new method also increases our options
for mechanical cultivation. The canoe shaper
uses the dirt from the middle of the bed to shape two mini beds that are able
to better support the plants and allow the drip tape to be buried at an
appropriate depth. Essentially, this
modified implement allows us to build a solid foundation for all the field
activities that need to happen throughout the life of the field. So far Rafael is very pleased with the
results. The irrigation team is also
pleased with the field. Having the drip
tape properly buried means less damage to the lines from weeding and
cultivating tools, which in turn means less leaks they have to repair! While we will have to hand weed the field at
some point, thus far we’ve been able to deal with most weeds with mechanical
cultivation.
We’ll see how things go the
rest of the season, but so far it seems that a little innovation may have helped
us achieve our overall improvement goals!
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| Transplanting the mother plants. |
This year we also widened the spacing between each bed so
we have more room for the harvest crew when they are picking. They utilize little picking carts to keep the
harvest totes off the ground. We don’t
want them to damage the plants so we ask them to walk gracefully in the field,
like ballerinas. None of them are
classically trained dancers, and while they are graceful, we found it is easier
to preserve the plants by just giving them more space to walk and place their
carts.
Over the course of the first year, we control weeds with
mechanical cultivation and hand weeding.
We also provide nutrients and watch for any disease or pest problems
that may need our attention. In late summer we seed a cover crop of
Japanese millet in the field which helps to shade out weeds. Japanese millet cannot survive a frost, so it
will die off with the first hard frost we get in the fall. The benefit of this is that the millet will
then become mulch for the field, how convenient! In the fall the plants will start to produce
the embryos or buds in the crown or base of the plant for the following
year. In addition to the mulch created
by the millet, we will also heavily mulch the field with straw after the ground
freezes but before it snows. All of this
mulch helps to insulate and protect the new growth in the crown from freezing
and thawing over the winter. When
spring rolls around and the temperatures start to warm up, we have to walk
through the field and loosen the straw mulch with a pitch fork so the new
growth can push through. We leave the
mulch in the field where it helps to fill in the spaces between the plants,
choke out the weeds and provide a clean bed for the strawberries.
The mulch isn’t removed too soon though or
the plants will start to blossom and are at greater risk of being damaged by
frost. If the blossoms are damaged by
frost, they will develop a black center and will not produce a berry. This
spring we experienced a late freeze, after the plants had already started to
blossom. In situations such as this we
have to be ready to respond by covering the field with large row covers. These are basically huge blankets to keep the
strawberries warm and protected from frost.
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| Japanese Millet planted in between rows of strawberries |
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| Black centers in blossoms mean no fruit will form. |
This year we planted 5 different varieties of
strawberries. We select the varieties
based on their ripening season, flavor, color, disease resistance and
production. Every year we evaluate the
plants and the characteristics of their fruit to decide which varieties we like
best and want to plant again. In
California and Florida, two major strawberry producing states, the varieties
they plant are “ever-bearing.” These
varieties have longer ripening seasons and have been bred to be a firmer berry with
a longer shelf life to hold up to shipping.
While these strawberries often look pretty, their flavor is no
comparison to any local berry you will get in early summer. The berries we plant are “June-bearing.” While our season is shorter in comparison, we
select varieties that ripen at different times so we can extend our season as long
as we can. The hot, dry weather we’ve
had this year has resulted in berries that are smaller in size, but they are
quite tasty as the flavor is concentrated into a smaller package!
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| Jaime & Gerardo removing the blossoms from the mother plants. |
After the harvest is done in the first year of production,
we “renovate” the field. This means we destroy
some of the plants to promote more runners and daughter plant production for
the next year. When harvest is finished in the second year of
production, we destroy the field. Why do
we do this when the field is still producing?
Well, we like to keep our patch as clean as we can and free from perennial
weeds. The older the patch, the greater
the chance that weed seeds such as dandelion and thistle, will make their way
into the patch. A young, clean patch
will usually have greater production and yields.
As you can see, there is a lot involved with strawberry
production! We hope you are enjoying
this year’s crop and perhaps next year we’ll be able to resume our Strawberry
Day event. While eating strawberries out
of a CSA box is a tasty experience, nothing compares to standing in the field
and eating a freshly picked strawberry right off the plant, still warm from the
sun. That is one of life’s simple
pleasures.
