IN SEASON : After the Flood
First the strawberry plants were getting flooded, now they’re doing the flooding.
After a hard, wet winter that saw strawberry fields from Orange County to Salinas under water, the plants are springing back into mid-season form. As a result, for the first time this year you’re seeing strawberries at reasonable prices.
In fact, strawberry growers are predicting that before it’s all over, this year’s harvest won’t be that far behind last year’s record crop. According to the California Strawberry Commission, the 1995 fresh harvest will be about 70 million (12-pint) trays, as compared to 1994’s 76 million.
The key, though, is timing. For the next month or so, we’re going to be in a situation where all of the state’s strawberry-producing areas will be harvesting at the same time. After a slow start, pickings the first week of April this year were only about 6% behind 1994.
What that means is that from here on out, you’re going to be seeing a lot of strawberries at very cheap prices.
What’s more, quality should be improving almost daily. “It’s been four or five weeks since there’s been rain in Southern California,” says Doug Shaw, a strawberry breeder at the University of California, Davis. “From bloom to harvest takes anywhere from four to seven weeks, so I’d say we’re looking at getting out of all the quality problems very shortly. We’re going to have some excellent quality.”
Shaw is part of the team that developed the newest addition to the strawberry family, the Camarosa. In commercial production for the first time this year, this variety already accounts for nearly 15% of the strawberry acreage in Ventura County. In most cases, it is replacing the Chandler variety introduced in 1984, also by the UC system.
According to Shaw, growers like the Camarosa because it is early bearing, high producing (up to 25% more than Chandlers) and has great shelf life. As far as taste is concerned, Shaw seems a bit more guarded: “It has pretty good flavor, but it’s a little firmer than the Chandler, so growers will need to leave it on the vine longer to get that nice juiciness.”
