Strawberry season may have been late, but it hasn’t disappointed local customers looking for taste of freshly picked berries.
The season is about a week behind average this year, but growers in Pictou County say the picking hasn’t been too bad.
Peter MacLean, owner of MacLean’s U-Pick, said it’s been an average growing season, but expects that the next several days will see some good berry picking at his Durham farm.
“We’ve got a good week left for picking,” he said.
“Probably it will be about the best picking we’ve had coming up. It’s going to be really good for the next seven days.”
Ken Parker of Parker’s Farm which sells fresh berries at their farm as well as to Sobeys said they took have seen about an average year despite the late start. He said they’ve had a good number of customers coming out for berries at the farm.
Parker said they weren’t impacted too severely by the late frost that happened this year, but it did create some problems.
Strawberry growers had been putting water on their plants at night to help prevent the frost from damaging them. While they succeeded at keeping the frost at bay, he said some sections of their fields were damaged by having too much water. It can cause nutrients to be leached and damage the berries.
He doesn’t bother picking those areas that were affected because they don’t meet the quality he wants.