Published: June 20, 2008 11:00 pm         

A berry good strawberry season

Wet, cool conditions are perfect

WASECA — Even though you must hunker down on the ground to pick strawberries, the fruits of the labor are sweet, this year especially.

The moist, chilly spring ideally played into strawberries’ horticultural needs, and the result is a banner, if slightly tardy, crop.

“Strawberries love wet and cool,” Janett Van Veldhuizen said as she walked along the rows of her U-Pick Strawberries farm five miles south of Waseca off Highway 13.

Strawberry-picking in southern Minnesota typically runs from mid to late June. But this year growers expect the season to extend into July.

“In most years, metro-area strawberry picking is winding down by July 4, but this year that will be the peak picking time,” said Minnesota Department of Agriculture marketing specialist Paul Hugunin.

“But picking conditions can vary from farm to farm and change from day to day, depending on the weather, field conditions and varieties.”

Van Veldhuizen said she picked her first crop June 11, but at another self-serve patch, Kathleen’s Gardens near Arlington, the crop is just rounding into ripeness.

“We’re extremely late this year,” Kathleen Thies said. “But strawberries like the cool weather. It allows them to get bigger and juicier, and this year there’s going to be beautiful berries in July, so we’re just telling people to be patient.”

At Hacker’s Tree Farm, Nursery and Greenhouse near Sleepy Eye, the first berry crop was picked June 13. That’s unusually late, but the tradeoff is a positive, Lynn Hacker said.

“The berries are big this year, but we’re into flavor, so size doesn’t really matter to us,” she said.

At the U-Pick patch, visitors are on their own. They pick, weigh and pay for $1-a-pound berries on the honor system.

A scale and cash box rest upon a plywood tabletop supported by two sawhorses.

The Van Veldhuizens began growing strawberries in 1992 on a two-acre site. Van Veldhuizen researches different varieties, planting new ones each year.

She gets her plants from Canada and says today’s varieties are superior to their forebears in at least one respect.

“The public will think of the ones they had as kids, but they’re not as resistant to the diseases we have these days.”

Van Veldhuizen’s personal favorite variety is the Sparkler.

“They’re a little sweeter, but they’re smaller and a little harder to pick.”

She said it usually takes about 30 minutes for a person to fill an ice cream bucket-size container, but pickers’ habits vary.

“Some people pick slowly and inspect every berry, and others just hurry up and fill the bucket.”