Florida weather results in ‘next-level’ strawberry quality

“Spray everything over here today, and this side, mañana,” Matt Parke told a crew member about the amino acid that will kickstart some of his 160 acres of strawberries after a cold snap at Parkesdale Farms, Dover, Fla.

A fourth-generation grower, Parke said the start of the Florida winter strawberry season has had a couple frosty mornings in November and December that slowed production but improved quality.

“When we have cooler years, the berry quality is a lot sweeter and firmer,” Parke said. “I think this year’s quality of fruit is going to be next-level. Hopefully, the market will prevail, and everyone is happy, COVID notwithstanding.”

Florida berries are generally sweeter than California’s but sometimes softer, so there’s not always the same shelf life, he said.

Parke planted a week earlier and started picking a little earlier this year, but with the cooler weather, by mid-December the harvest is dropping off because those early berries are picked off. 

“My normal stuff is behind last year. Last year, we were picking a lot early and never stopped. This is kind of a slow start compared to last year, volume wise,” Parke said.

Watsonville, Calif.-based Well-Pict’s network of independent Florida growers has reported large yields of the company’s proprietary berry varieties with early volumes steadily increasing, said Jim Grabowski, director of marketing, from the Wimauma, Fla., location.

“We are expecting to yield berries with considerable size, bright and vibrant color, and of course, an exceptional flavor profile with an attractive aroma,” Grabowski said.

Weather

Several growers have reported a warmer than average October and November increasing yields, with a bit of recent cooler weather to increase size, said Vance Whitaker, associate professor of horticulture at University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center.

“Strawberry flavor is very good right now. The weather is ideal for quality: cool and sunny,” he said.

The latter part of 2020 has been good for Well-Pict’s Florida crops, Grabowski said.

“The weather has been near perfect,” he said.

But some of that earlier warm weather helps other living things thrive too.

Controlling the chilli thrips, a pest that arrives on strawberry leaves a couple of weeks after planting, is especially hard in warmer weather.

“From the growers I’ve talked to, it’s become a particularly big problem this year,” Whitaker said.

Unlike several other specialty crops in Florida, hurricanes aren’t usually a problem for strawberries, as the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June through November, and the Dover-Plant City, Fla., strawberry season is mid-November through March, sometimes early April, according to the Florida Strawberry Growers Association.

The National Hurricane Center downgraded Hurricane Eta to a tropical storm by the time it flooded parts of Florida, twice in mid-November.

There were sustained 70-mile-per-hour winds, but the plastic was still on the rows, Parke said.

“It’s crazy. We had a hurricane come through with strawberries on the ground. We were scared. Luckily, it hugged the coast,” he said. “Honestly, I thought it was going to be a disaster, but it wasn’t for strawberries.”

Varieties

Parkesdale Farms backed off on Florida brilliance and upped its acreage on Florida sweet sensation, Parke said. 

“It’s a bigger berry and holds more sugar, and to me it’s a more uniformly firmer berry,” Parke said. “Customers love the shape and size, and they present a lot better I think.”

Overall acreage is same as last year at Parke’s farms.

Aside from the 10% of all Florida strawberries that are Driscoll’s proprietary varieties, the rest are about 60% brilliance, an early variety that’s high-yielding, and 40% sweet sensation, which finishes the season well with great flavor and good size, Whitaker said.

“They combine well together,” he said.

Whitaker’s work focuses on strawberry breeding and genetics.

Then there is the newest, not-yet-named red variety created by the University of Florida and the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. It has great flavor like sweet sensation but also has some of brilliance’s yield-steady characteristics, Whitaker said.

Next season, this new red berry should fill about 150 acres of the more than 9,400 or so total acres.

And a new, fully ripe white strawberry that tastes a little like pineapple will enter a few test markets, and if accepted, could comprise as much as 5% of the strawberry acreage, he said. Organic production makes up 5% of Florida’s strawberry acreage. 

G&D Farms, the farming operation of Wish Farms, Plant City, is adding 600 acres of production, starting with 55 acres this season. The plan is to grow organic strawberries on this land.

The sweet sensation variety comprises more than 90% of G&D Farms’ overall acreage, but Wish Farms is using several rows to test 100 new varieties and seedling trials. 

Also, seven acres of the branded Pink-A-Boo Pineberries, a white variety, have been planted.

“I believe there will be strong demand for Pink-A-Boos in the coming years, and this land will allow us to expand that program without having to reduce our red strawberry acreage,” owner Gary Wishnatzki said in early December.

Demand

When volume in Mexico or California is high in winter, that obviously depresses the Florida market, but the effect of Mexican competition has leveled off the past couple of years, Whitaker said.

“Overall, yield last year was probably higher than ever,” Whitaker said about Florida. 

“The acreage here has remained stable last couple years, and production has increased, probably because of new varieties and good weather.”

Parke has a lot of berry customers in the Northeast, selling through Red Blossom Sales Inc., Salinas and Oxnard, Calif.

His farm quit picking last season when New York shut down for the pandemic.

“The demand last season leading up to New York’s shutdown was extraordinary — abnormal for the period — but then, when they shut down all the restaurants in New York City, it came to a screeching halt,” Parke said. “Our broker calls and says ‘Stop packing right now. New York is shut down.’ I was like, ‘Oh man.’”

Parke’s farm was packing 35,000 boxes a day and normally goes to April, so its lost a big chunk of the last week or two of sales at the tail end of the 2019-20 season.

“This year, we don’t know what lies ahead, if demand will be there,” he said. “If things shut down again, marketwise, we’re worried.”