Strawberry season late, says grower, but quality, quantity should be high

ROME – Although the cool spring slowed the growth in many Maine strawberry patches, this latest spate of sun and heat has some berries ripening at a rapid rate.

“Normally we have to close a day or two to allow the berries to ripen,” said Vaughn Razar, who operates the 3-acre Rome Strawberry Patch, a pick-your-own facility. “This year we have too many.”

Razar said, “As you know, it was cold and cloudy all spring. It never got much above 60 degrees. This week, however, I am watering the berry plants every hour just to keep them cool.

“This year it is an outstanding yield and very high quality,” he added. Because Razar uses a combination of raised beds and plastic, his plants and the soil around them heat up early, giving him a jump-start on the season.

The rest of the state’s strawberry growers, however, are hoping the sun will turn their green berries red. The cool spring slowed the berry plants’ production considerably, leaving plants full of berries but not allowing them to ripen.

Up north in Grand Isle, Kate Cook of Skylandia Organic Farm said “everything is growing vigorously” but her fields are just now “berrying up.” Cook sells her berries to John’s Organic Ice Cream in Liberty and a catalog sales company that produces vinaigrettes and sauces.

Now that the berries have appeared, Cook said she will begin daily irrigation to plump them and keep them from getting tough. “What we really need is a couple of days of slow, misting rain,” she said.

In southern Maine, a recording answers the phone at Maxwell’s Farm, a pick-your-own operation in Cape Elizabeth. “I know you are as anxious as we are,” says the recording. “But please be patient. We are seeing lots and lots of green berries and we hope to be open by the end of next week.”

Susan Stevenson at Stevenson’s Strawberry Farm in Wayne, a 15-acre, pick-your-own facility, also hopes to be open by Saturday. “It is a little bit later than last year, but only by two days,” she said. “If we hadn’t gotten all this heat this week, it would have been pushed back even later.”

Stevenson said it will be a very good crop but not what farmers refer to as a bumper crop.

According to the Maine Department of Agriculture, 142 farms produced just over 1.6 million pounds of strawberries in 1997, the last year that statistics were available. Most of these are sold through farmers markets and pick-your-own farms.