The interesting thing about soft fruit is that no seed is involved.
Whilst the individual strawberries are covered in seeds, each one is potentially a different variety. This means that they cannot be used to produce plants for the following year’s crops.
So, we have to buy small plants each year which have been produced on special stalks called runners. These runners grow from Mother Plants in fields and can have up to 8 baby plants growing on them.
These baby plants are harvested by hand, before being planted to grow to the size that we need them.
They often arrive to us frozen solid, as they will have been stored and prepared for us overseas. We let them defrost and then carefully plant them – between 6 and 10 per metre depending on the variety we are growing.
Our growers water them and provide them with food in the form of fertiliser to help them grow strong and healthy. At exactly the right time, they will change what is in the food to stimulate the plants to produce flowers.
Once they’ve been pollinated by the bees that roam through the crop, it’s these flowers that produce the fruit. We also introduce other insects into the plants which help us control any pests that could damage the plants or the fruit itself. They wander around in the crop canopy, searching out pests and eliminating them.
After pollination, the yellow part of the flower swells and transforms into the succulent berries that we all love to eat.
These berries gradually turn red and fill with sugar until they are ready to be picked. Each berry is then gently picked by hand and placed in the punnets that you pick up in the store.
Beautifully fresh and ready for a picnic in the sun.