By Dr. Vern Grubinger/UVM Extension
There’s nothing like the taste of a fresh-picked strawberry. Sweet, juicy, and flavorful, it’s the first fruit to ripen on our local farms, and this year’s crop is a good one.
The buds that produce strawberries were formed last fall. Growers then tucked the plants away under a layer of straw to protect them from winter damage. Flowers that opened this spring turned into berries in about a month.
Strawberries are grown on many diversified vegetable and berry farms. They’re an essential crop because they provide early-season income and have a high value per acre. However, the risks are also high. In addition to potential winter injury, early spring frosts, heatwaves during harvest, and a variety of pests can lead to crop losses.
The 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Census of Agriculture counted 125 farms with 168 acres of strawberries in Vermont. A typical yield is about 6,000 pounds an acre, so over a million pounds of Vermont strawberries must be picked, sold, and eaten in a relatively short time. Almost all these berries are sold directly to customers or local stores and distributors.
Nationally, about 1.4 million tons of strawberries are produced each year. The vast majority come from specialized farms in California, with Florida a distant second in production. These berries get shipped to stores and processors.
Most of the strawberries grown in Vermont are called June-bearers for obvious reasons. There are also some strawberry varieties called everbearing, which bloom and fruit throughout the summer. These are trickier to grow because they require ongoing attention and are more vulnerable to insect attack later in the summer.
Wild strawberries have been eaten since ancient times, but the development of modern varieties was a relatively recent process involving extensive plant breeding, including the hybridization of different strawberry species.
‘Hovey’ was the name of the first American strawberry variety resulting from plant breeding. It was developed by Charles Hovey, a nurseryman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1834.
‘Wilson’ was bred in 1851 by James Wilson of Albany, New York, who crossed ‘Hovey’ with other varieties. Wilson was productive, firm, and hardy and could be grown in many types of soil. It also had “perfect” flowers, containing both male and female reproductive structures so that it could be grown by itself without another variety for pollination.
Wilson changed the strawberry into a major crop that would be grown across the continent. The ease with which it could be grown and the availability of railroads for transporting the crop led to “strawberry fever,” which dramatically increased production in the 1860s.
Arthur Howard learned to love strawberries as a young man while living with the Perfectionist community in Putney, Vermont. He later developed ‘Howard 17’ at his farm in Belchertown, Massachusetts. That variety dominated strawberry production in the early 1900s. It had tolerance to leaf spots, leaf scorch, and virus diseases, and it formed many crowns with early flower bud initiation. For decades, it was important for commercial use and breeding.
Before 1920, strawberry breeding was primarily conducted by growers; however, since then, most new varieties have been developed by scientists at federal and state experiment stations. One renowned strawberry breeder was Dr. George M. Darrow, a Vermonter who was chief horticulturist at the USDA. He improved the disease resistance of strawberries and developed dozens of varieties that contributed to the fruits we eat today.
To find a farm where you can pick your own fresh, delicious local strawberries, visit: vermontpickyourown.org.
Dr. Vern Grubinger is the University of Vermont Extension vegetable and berry specialist.
