After the Basics

The Strawberry Grower

When I was a brand-new PhD, I went to visit a farmer in northwest PA who grew strawberries. I had a lot of knowledge gained from years of university training. I knew most of the right answers. But I learned something at this farm that I never learned from a book. The farm’s location was very cold in the winter, too cold–the books and best fruit specialists told him–for strawberries. But he wanted to grow strawberries to sell to his local community. He followed all the best recommendations for large and small strawberry growers across PA. He planted his first strawberry plants. And most of them died the first winter.

After a few failed attempts (following more and more of the best recommendations) this farmer decided to take another approach. He studied and observed his farm, paid attention to the climate during all the seasons, noticed pest pressure, summer growing conditions and winter patterns. Then he sat down, studied his notes, studied strawberries, and researched what they require to grow and be fruitful. He considered the attributes and negative aspects of his farm. By the time I visited him he had been successfully growing strawberries for about 10 years.

In the 1970’s and 80’s matted bed strawberry production was most common. Strawberries were grown on flat rows about 3 feet wide. It normally took about 2 to 3 years to reach full production from well-spaced mother plants that were planted the first year. In the fall the strawberries were covered with straw to reduce damage from cold winter temperatures. In the spring the straw was pulled off the plants to allow them to grow and begin flowering. One common problem with this system was that strawberry beds became very dense with plants and leaves. As a result, fruit rots, flower rots and leaf blights were not uncommon. Fungicides helped to reduce fruit loss and leaf damage. After harvest the flat beds made it easy for the farmer to thin out plants mechanically, mowing the leaves off for easy fertilization and weed control. This stimulated plant reproduction and growth over the following summer months. With the right location and planting site conditions, growers could produce a good yield of quality strawberries year after year using this system.

However, the farmer in this story faced unique challenges. Extremely cold temperatures could kill strawberry plants even if they had been covered with straw in the fall. Feet of snow in the winter did protect plants from cold temperatures but the snow was so deep the plants suffered from being covered too long in the spring and early summer. Additionally, being covered so long with snow meant that the plants that did survive had less than favorable weather conditions for plant growth and berry development once they emerged from under the snow in late spring to summer. With all that snow melt the soil remained waterlogged throughout the spring which was not good for the plants or their roots. Extremely wet conditions would rot the roots, plants, and flowers alike. These were certainly not ideal or even seemingly moderate conditions for growing strawberries profitably.

Here is what I saw when I visited his farm and picked strawberries for myself. To get his strawberry plants out from under all that deep snow he planted them on extremely high beds that were almost waist high. (Interestingly, raised beds developed independently into an industry standard for strawberries later, but at the time this was a novel approach.) He worked out how high the beds needed to be to keep them under snow during the winter to protect the plants from the cold but also to allow the snow to melt, exposing the plants in the spring for well-timed plant and flower development. The high beds also kept the strawberry roots out of the waterlogged soil from the snow melt. He focused on individual plant production from the original mother plants rather than production based on the whole matted row. He planted his mother plants at much higher densities than were common in the matted row system to maximize production and high yields from the very first season. He used trickle irrigation to supply water and nutrients to his mother plants since his extremely high beds drained off water quickly. But this choice also allowed him to monitor and manage soil moisture for optimal plant growth and fruit production.

When I visited the strawberry grower, I had three small children at home who all loved nothing more than getting freshly picked strawberries after one of my road trips to visit farms. I remember standing in one spot on his farm and harvesting for my children some of the best strawberries I had ever seen. The fruit quality was excellent. They were everything you would want a strawberry to be, flavorful, large, sweet, and brilliant red. I was so impressed by how many fruits were on one plant that I counted them. This is no exaggeration, I counted 110 ripe fruit, green fruit, and flowers on one mother plant! I didn’t have to stoop over much to harvest since the beds were so high. There was so much sunlight and air exposure on the high beds for the heavily laden mother plants that there were no fruit rot or diseased plants to be seen. I am certain the high beds reduced the need for fungicide sprays. I was not a strawberry expert at the time, but I knew a little bit about growing strawberries. I was very impressed with how he had fine-tuned strawberry production to his farm with challenges most would say were difficult to impossible. That was a moment in my young career that opened my mind to what determined farmers could really do to customize fruit growing on their own farms. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw it many times over as I visited farms over the next 30 years

What was I seeing? A farmer who knew his farm, his growing conditions, strawberry plants, and fruit. I saw a one-of-a-kind strawberry production system that was ideally tailored to his farm and his farm alone. University specialists and fruit farmers from all over the world came to see what he had done and to attempt to replicate it on their own properties. But his system never really seemed to fit anywhere else. It only worked best on his farm and at his location. What I learned that day was this: the best person to make a farm successful and profitable is the farmer himself. Specialist recommendations are, by their nature, general. They are made to fit as many farm situations as possible. This farmer learned the basics of strawberry production, learned, and studied his farm well, and then developed his own strawberry production system that was ideally matched to his situation. That is in fact what every good farmer does to a greater or lesser degree, and so must you if you are to be truly successful at growing organic fruit.