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I'm in McBee, South Carolina, at McLeod Farms
talking today with Spencer McLeod
about an unusual winter crop.
Spencer, I know that you can grow collard greens
in the winter and turnips.
What are you doing growing strawberries?
SPENCER MCLEOD: Well, we actually
started this three years ago.
We're growing strawberries in the wintertime.
We built these tunnel houses for this purpose.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Well, what is a tunnel house?
Is this different from a greenhouse?
SPENCER MCLEOD: This is kind of a skeleton
form of a greenhouse.
It's simply just plastic pulled over some metal posts.
It's not quite as stout as a greenhouse.
But it does the job.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Now I am kind of confused
because I thought that strawberries came in
in the spring time.
How can you get them to be producing fruit in the winter?
Is this a different variety?
Yes, ma'am.
This is actually a day neutral variety.
And what that means is the strawberry
doesn't need a certain amount of hours of daylight
to produce flowers.
It actually produces flowers regardless
of how long the day is.
This particular variety that we're in now is Radiance.
And we also have Albions.
And they are day neutral berries.
AMANDA MCNULTY: It looks like this
is typical to what I would see on an outdoor strawberry
though.
Describe how you plant it and the preparations for that.
SPENCER MCLEOD: Right.
Right here we're growing in a plastic culture, which
is a raised bed, this tarp.
And that helps with weeds and isolates the plant.
We also can fertilize through our irrigation
system underneath this plastic.
So it's very similar to what we do outside
for our spring berries.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Now do you get some advantages
by having the berries on the ground
when the temperatures do get cold?
SPENCER MCLEOD: Absolutely.
Last year we actually experimented with some tables.
And they do work in some applications.
But for us, we found that the ground allowed the plant
to stay a lot warmer.
On those very cold nights, we actually
use a cloth to cover them to use the ground as a heater.
We see a better yield in production
in that type of system in the ground
versus growing on a platform.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Spencer, some people
might think that all you have to do is put these in here
and then just turn the water in the irrigation on.
But there's a lot of just day to day things
because right now it's a chilly day outside.
But in here, we're getting pretty warm.
So do you have to open things and raise plastic
and close plastic?
Tell me some of the problems and some of the challenges
you have to meet.
SPENCER MCLEOD: Um, typically if we
kept the doors closed throughout the day,
it would become really hot in here.
It would be at 90, 100 degrees even if it
was 45 or 50 degrees outside.
This is like a greenhouse.
When the sun is shining, it gets really hot and humid.
And in those types of elements, we
start to see pressures of disease.
And to eliminate that, we open every day-- especially
when we know it's going to be sunny-- to let a breeze come
in here and kind of let the water evacuate.
AMANDA MCNULTY: And just like with your outdoor crop stuff,
it's going to be real cold.
So do you have to sometimes pull up the covers?
SPENCER MCLEOD: That's right.
We're trying to keep the flowers from freezing.
The moment that we have an event where
it gets below 31 degrees, 32 degrees in here,
we've actually killed the flower.
And we will have a berry for another 30 to 45 days
til we make a flower.
So what we're trying to do in this,
in this house is keep it warm enough to
where the flowers stay alive and we can keep picking berries.
AMANDA MCNULTY: You know we talk a lot about pollinators
and how important they are.
And of course, a lot of the crops-- the wonderful squash
and pumpkins and things-- require that.
Do you have-- it's kind of hard to think of bees running
up and down these long houses.
SPENCER MCLEOD: Right.
AMANDA MCNULTY: What about a strawberry?
How does it get pollinated?
SPENCER MCLEOD: Strawberries are self pollinating.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Oh.
SPENCER MCLEOD: They can use assistance from bees or wind.
Typically though, you don't have to put bees out in a field
to get good pollination.
Because we are in a tunnel house, we do have limited wind.
We haven't noticed too much of pollination issues.
Last year we had a few and we tried some bees.
But generally speaking, strawberries
don't need an external third party pollinator.
AMANDA MCNULTY: So that is another reason.
It lends itself well to this kind of production.
SPENCER MCLEOD: That's right.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Spencer, you know,
I'm not so sure what a strawberry that grows
in the winter would taste like.
How's the flavor?
Excellent.
When we started this three years ago,
you would typically think that a winter berry off season
would be bland or fleshy.
It wouldn't be sweet.
But we actually harvest them the week after Christmas.
And we ate some of the best berries
we've ever had in our lives.
The Albion is a great variety, great berry.
It's very sweet.
And it's very unusual to think that a December berry, a winter
berry would be so tasty.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Spencer, it's been
fun to learn about winter strawberries with you.
And if people want to know more about all the things
that are going on at McLeod farms, what's
the best way to do that?
You can catch us on Facebook.
We have a pretty active Facebook page
that gives you some updates of what's
going on the farm, what's coming off, what we're growing.
And also our website, we have some videos
that you can see some of our production
and how we do things.
AMANDA MCNULTY: Well, thank you for what you're doing
for South Carolina agriculture.
Thank you for having us.
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