Posts Tagged: strawberries

2018 Opening with a Bang as Nitrate Levels Surge

While most of the strawberry growing community is nestled around the warm fire roasting chestnuts, drinking hot toddies and reflecting on the past year, I've been managing a fairly large amount of communication concerning plant dieback which is almost certainly attributed to high nitrate accumulation from pre-plant fertilizers. Those queries which are accompanied by soil analyses say as much with EC's above four, and nitrates well above the 40 ppm what I would see to be of concern, with one sample even setting my heart racing with a stratospheric print of 220 ppm.

This has been discussed pretty thoroughly in this space before, so I simply provide the links here:

 

//ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=6538

and a closer analysis of the issue, including soil samples, here:

//ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=6608

 

We are not looking at getting much benefit from rain for a while, so it's time to run the overhead sprinklers to leach all of this stuff out if high nitrates are the issue in a plant dieback scenario.

White Strawberries in Japan

Really interesting video forwarded to me by colleague Steven Koike this morning concerning a largish "white strawberry" grown in Japan.  Cultivated in Karatsu in the south, these berries fetch an eye popping equivalent of 40 bucks a tray.  That said, the grower, Teshima Yasuhito, is only harvesting 10% of the fruit since expected grade is very, very high.

Sorry, can't embed this video, so you have to follow the link, the video is very high quality and worth the watch.

https://vimeo.com/220367506

 

Small quibble, but an important one since it concerns the translation of an aspect of the fruit's flavor.  The grower is made to claim that in a way the flavor is "mysterious" but that is not what exactly he says.  He says it is "fushigi" (???) which does not translate to "mysterious".  Consider that the title "Alice in Wonderland" translates to "Fushigi no kuni no Alice" (?????????) we can deduce that he is actually saying it is a "wonder" or maybe even "amazing".

At any rate, sure would like to try one to make my own assessment of this white strawberry, and maybe someday I will.

6/15/2017 Reader and strawberry grower Thomas Flewell adds the following comment concerning white strawberries and strawberries in Asia in general:

"Hi Mark: I have sampled several of the Japanese strawberry varieties at a greenhouse operated by my client in central China. The flavors are all distinctive and very different to the taste expected from strawberries in the US. Among those I  tasted was a white strawberry from Japan. Not sure it was the same one mentioned in your blog. The US and the Asian market criteria for what makes a good strawberry are very different to one another - literally worlds apart."

Thanks Steve for the forward!

H/T Thom Flewell, thank you.

XX

New Cost and Return Study Now Available: Sample Costs to Produce and Harvest Strawberries

We've just completed the newest UC ANR sample cost and return study on conventional strawberry and attached it here.

Giant effort on the part of colleague Laura Tourte along with Jeremy Murdock and Daniel Sumner from the Agricultural Issues Center with UC ANR.

HUGE round of applause for the growers who worked with us to true our work - many hours spent poring over this document with so much great advice and input.  Thanks all!!

Document is posted below, crack it open and learn what it takes these days to grow and harvest a crop of conventional strawberries on the Central Coast with all of the new challenges included and updated.

 

Cost and return study for conventional strawberries now available.

Even Bigger Berries

Ok.  So I've been getting a good number of texts these past two days of people showing off and holding up pretty good sized fruit. San Andreas and Sweet Ann are clear leaders in this category, but none is going to be as large as the 197 g (very nearly half a pound!) beast picked out of the CBC breeding program last year and the photo of which was contributed by manager Kyle. 

Some discussion of the origin of this 197 g fruit.  Some would say that this is a "fused fruit" meaning it is derived from two flowers and thus not truly a single berry, but there are some fruit of this size and shape which come from a single flower.  It's hard to tell which is it from the photo, but at any rate growers will find these from time to time, more often than not in the early part of the season.

I think this enormous fruit should settle all arguments about who has the biggest fruit around.  At any rate, if you think you've found a bigger one, try me and I'll post it.

At 197.5 grams, this fruit will be difficult to beat.

Strawberry Disorders: Identification and Management Website

This website, run by colleague Oleg Daugovish and one to which all of us Advisors contribute too, should be pretty useful to you all in figuring out some of the problems you see on strawberries in the field:

 

http://ucanr.edu/sites/sdim/

 

 

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