The strawberries made it through the crazy weather of this past week. Thankfully the 10 day forecast looks much calmer. We're seeing some berries in all the phases of growth, from flower bud to green berries the size of dimes, nickels, and quarters and even a handful of pink berries. They're rapidly growing - will be ready in a of couple weeks!
Although the picking season hasn't started, we've been busy bees around here lately.
We wanted to bee prepared to have plenty of pollination of blooms when they start. With this warm spell, they have started blooming like crazy.
Each year, we bring bumblebees to our farm to help pollinate our berries. Although they aren't required, we've found that they help with berry shape & size.
Good news: warmer weather = new blooms! Even though the extreme cold killed many of the blooms this past weekend (pictured with black center), new blooms are growing each day. The flowers with yellow centers will become ripe strawberries in about 30 days.
Quick Farm Update: Quite a few of our blooms got zapped by the cold last night. Although we had the blankets & irrigation going through the night, it wasn't quite enough for the tender new blooms. No worries though - the plants will be fine, we just won't be able to open as soon as we thought. Mother Nature for the win. We predict it will be at least mid-April before the berries will be ripe this season. We'll keep ya posted on their progress. 😊
We are proud members of the Virginia Strawberry Association and would like to thank them for all that they do to support strawberry growers in Virginia. Jake recently attended the Mid-Atlantic Strawberry Program in Virginia Beach where he networked and learned about current strawberry innovations.
