New Forest Fruit has been growing strawberries through the winter. These are a premium Japanese variety with a high brix level.
"The season for our Berry Pop strawberries starts in December," said Sandy Booth from New Forest Fruits. "The season has not been quite as good as we would have liked, but the eating quality has been superb. We like to achieve 10-12 brix, but this has been very dependent on the levels of sunshine."
The Berry Pop strawberries are sold in Sainsbury's and locally, "Demand has been very good and in the scoring system top marks above every other variety in January."
Main strawberry crop
As well as producing strawberries through the winter New Forest Fruit is also one of the first to produce the regular varieties in the UK. "The Glasshouse production started ten days ago, and we are now getting into volumes; the field production will start in two weeks."
The start of the glasshouse production is a bit later than normal due to the weather in September/October last year as flowers were very deep, and so we have had to spend a lot on heating to get flowers out. January and February were not great months as far as the weather went either, but March has been amazing, and the good weather seems to be continuing. The sunny days and cool nights are giving us really good brix levels."
Demand
"Demand has been good due to a poor start to the import season. I think the volumes from Spain are starting to improve now, but they haven't had the best weather either."
For more information:
Jackie Barr
New Forest Fruit Company
Tel.: +44 (0)1590 612297
Email: jackie@newforestfruit.com
www.newforestfruit.com