David Handley, Vegetable and Small Fruit Specialist: "I am David Handley, Vegetable and Small Fruit
Specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and we are here today to talk about
strawberry harvest. We are at Roaring Brook Nurseries in Wales, Maine. Maine strawberry
season usually starts about the third week of June. We are a little early this year because
we had such a warm spring and a winter that wasn't too disagreeable.
"Interestingly, the strawberry we pick today is a hybrid between two species--the wild
strawberries that grow naturally here in the East Coast of the United States, including
Maine, which is Fragaria Virginiana, and another species that grows out in the West Coast of
the Americas. In this case, the East Cost strawberry was brought by early explorers
from Europe, where it was grown and highly prized because it was better than the native
European strawberry. But then, about 200 years later, a French captain commanding a ship
that was actually spying on the Spanish in South America, happened to find some strawberries
being cultivated by the natives that had bigger fruit than he had ever seen. He brought those
back to France and about 50 years later the cross was made between that wild East Coast
type and the wild South American type; it resulted in a new species and that is the
strawberry that we grow today. So, two Native American species that were actually crossed
in Europe and then brought here to give us the strawberry that we enjoy so much today.
"When we start talking about strawberry harvest, one of the nicest things about picking your
own berries is that you can choose for yourself which ones are going to be the best tasting.
What we really want to look for is a fruit that is fully ripe. So, when we talk about
that and we are looking for ripe berries, we don't want to look for ones with white
tips. These are not quite ready yet--they will still be a little tart, too firm, and
one of the important things to remember about strawberries once you pick them is that they
will not ripen any further. They are not like an apple, they are not like a banana. They
go downhill from there, so you want to make sure they are at their peak of ripeness when
you pick and the way to do that is to make sure they are red all the way down to the
very bottom. If there is any white there at all, they need a couple more days before they
are going to be ready to go. When we pick strawberries, always look under the plants--not
all of the good ones are out here, and there is some under the canopy that you need to
look for. Here, wehave a pretty nice one. You want to take them by the stem, just a
little bit above the berry, an inch or so, and just pinch them with your nails, and just
give it a little twist, and it will come right off and let it roll right into your palm.
Don't squeeze the fruit, don't pull the fruit that will be bruise it. Anything you do to
bruise the fruit will ruin its shelf life and won't last as long nor have as good quality.
And that goes right into the basket and we are ready for more.
"Generally when we are picking strawberries, we want to pick them into a container that
is not too deep. If it allows the fruit to get more than 4-5 deep, the one on the bottom
is getting crushed. You need to think of these fruit as being alive. If they are
getting squished, then they are just not going to have the shelf life and they are
not going to have the long-term quality.
"You always want to pick your strawberries with the stem on. Some people will hull them
in the field--they just pull the cap right off in the field, and when you do that again,
you have hurt the shelf life and have wounded living tissue. So, the time to cap them is
when you are ready to eat them, after you have brought them home and you are ready to
go, because they are not going to have a shelf life if you take that stem off. So, the stem
stays on when you bring them home.
"Generally, growers are going to sell these to you by the pound. You figure a quart is
going to weigh someplace between a pound and a quarter, or a pound and a half. Sometimes,
they will give you bigger containers than this, but usually the containers will be nice
and shallow, so the fruit will not get squished.
"When you bring these home, put them in a place where they will not going to be exposed
to direct sunlight. Preferably, it should be a cool spot. You can put them into a refrigerator
and they will last from 3-5 days. You will notice they will come out of the refrigerator
and be kind of dull in color. They will sit on your shelf just fine as long as it's not
too warm. They will last from two to three days and still have pretty good quality.
"If you are ready to freeze them this is the time that they should be rinsed and then have
the caps removed. Then, they either can be put on a cookie sheet and put in freezer until
they are nice and frozen, and then dumped into bags. Or you can slice them at that point,
mix them with a little bit of sugar and then put them into freezer bags that way. The sugar
helps to draw some of the juice out of the strawberries, which will form a nice syrup
when you pour it out, but if you prefer not to have the sugar in there, you can freeze
them without sugar just fine."