It's A Berry Good Year in BC

"The ancient Romans believed that the berries alleviated symptoms of melancholy, fainting, all inflammations, fevers, throat infections, kidney stones, halitosis, attacks of gout, and diseases of the blood, liver and spleen" (Strawberries and More: History and Lore).

And if those Romans were still around, they'd tell you they taste great, too!

Is there anything as sweet as the taste of the first strawberries of the year, fresh from your home garden or famer's field? In the spring a young man's fancy may turn to thoughts of love, but gardeners are dreaming of that first berry crop of the season.

Sure, we see big fat strawberries in the supermarkets long before June, but they don't compare to the ones we grow here. They look fabulous. In truth, I've never grown a strawberry as big as some of the ones I see in the stores. But those California imports are bred for size and shelf life and they just don't have the flavour. Compared to a fresh BC berry, they're bland, bland, bland!

June is the peak of the year for strawberry-loving gardeners, because it's the traditional time of the strawberry harvest. Many of our BC farms grow June-bearing strawberries, because this type of strawberry produces the largest crop. (The downside is that June-bearing varieties only produce fruits over a three-week period.) When I was a child, going out to one of the local farm's U-Pick field and picking (and eating!) fresh berries was a ritual that I looked forward to eagerly each year.

Here in BC, there's no real need for any home gardener to grow strawberries, as we have so many berry-producing farms. The 2001 Farm Fresh Products Guide is a useful directory of some of our BC growers; just enter the name of the crop you're loooking for and hit enter, to see detailed information about farms in the Fraser Valley. (There's also a link on this page to the Southern Vancouver Island Farm Products Guide.)

According to the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries, BC produces about one quarter of all the strawberries produced in Canada, over 3 million kg of strawberries worth approximately 6 million dollars! It's interesting that we still need to import berries from other places to meet the demand.

Living in strawberry heaven, as it were, there's no real need to grow your own strawberries here. But I grow them anyway for the sheer pleasure of it - and because I don't want to be deprived of fresh, sweet strawberries eleven months of the year.

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