Strawberry season struggles across the Maritimes

Right inside the door of Trish and Henk’s Quality Produce is a sure sign of summer, but despite the table full of bright red, locally grown, fresh strawberries, this growing season has been anything but easy.

“This wet weather sure is not helping at all because it causes more diseases that we didn’t expect, the berries are starting to rot too early or too fast,” said Henk Tepper.

He has been growing berries for eight or nine years now and this season has seen a few snags.

“It has been pretty slow. The weather was cold to start with and now we’re having lots of rain, so the fields are very wet,” he said.

Right now their fields are currently even too wet to offer u-pick strawberries, but they are picking daily to salvage the crop and provide the produce to the community.

“I feel that strawberries this year are going to be scarce because of the weather and we’ve had no sun,” said Trish Moses.

“They’re soaked and they’re not liking it, but what we do have they’re delicious, they’re local, we know what we’re putting in the ground, we eat them for our family as well and we want to share them with everybody, so our prices are going to be lower.”

Henk and Trish holding up a sample of their crop on Friday afternoon. (Courtesy: Alana Pickrell)

Right now, the locally owned store is offering their berries for $6.50 a box, which is helping draw in customers.

“My mom is in the local nursing home and loves fresh strawberries so I’m on Facebook with Trish and Henk’s and saw they have a great price on their berries, so I decided to stop here and pick up three boxes,” said Susan Dryden, a local resident.

“One of me, one for dad and one for my mom.”

While finding ways to manage the problematic forecast, experts say this years challenges actually started earlier across the Maritimes.

“It was definitely a slow start and that was definitely in part due to the cold weather that we had early on,” said Jordan Eyamie, the vice president of Horticulture Nova Scotia.

“I guess if you were to compare it to last year, last year was so hot, like from May to June, and this year we were getting barely in the 20s and last year our first pick was like 300 flats and this year our first pick was 12, so it’s a very very slow start.”

Eyamie says she is also struggling with the wet conditions. She says strawberries can’t be picked during the rain, making it challenging to plan ahead and she is also seeing more disease pressures this season.

“Recently, like in the last few days, it hasn’t been as bad,” she said.

“The forecast has been calling for rain so everyone’s kind of on edge, watching the radar whether on your phone or your computer or watching the news, but it’s just stressful that way.”

While the growers are currently struggling with too much rain, Eyamie says it was a different story in the early spring.

“I did ask the former owners of this farm if they’d ever seen a spring like this and they said never, like we’ve never seen weather this dry at this time of year,” she said.

“You know, April showers bring May flowers and we weren’t getting any showers.”

However, right now experts in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia say that sun is needed for the rest of the strawberry season.

In terms of prices, both Eyamie and Tepper say they are on par with last year.

“Prices are always higher in the start of the season, they will go down as the berries will grow more and we have more,” said Tepper.

“It’s always supply and demand.”

However, some strawberry lovers remember how things used to be.

“I’m old and I remember 50 cent boxes, so it’s a little hard as you see them go up, but everything’s going up so if you want a good summer treat, it’s worth paying for,” said Dryden.

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