Fans of pick-your-own fruit have long harvested their annual strawberry purchase from Lincoln County farmers. For those used to eating organically grown berries, the pickings are a bit slimmer than in the past.
At Sand Hill Farm in Somerville, a recorded message informs callers there will be not strawberry picking this year. Sand Hill farmers Shaun Keenan and Benji Knisley decided at the end of the 2012 season that they would let their fields rest for a year.
At Goranson Farm in Dresden, there was a different situation. Farmer Jan Goranson said the farm had strawberries to sell at their farm stand and area farmers’ markets, but there were not enough for pick-your-own customers.
She said the second-year berries were affected by root weevils and the berries planted last year, for this year’s harvest suffered from winter injury.
“It seems that the coldest part of the winter we didn’t have snow cover,” She said temperatures reached a low of minus-8 degrees and there may not have been enough straw on the plants to protect them.
With this spring’s damp, cool weather there has been a lot of fungus and Goranson said the organic grower’s arsenal does not include fungicides that conventional growers can use.
Farmer Ben Marcus of Sheepscot General at Uncas Farms in Whitefield said, June 25, his MOFGA-certified organic berries are doing well.
“We have a lot of ripe berries and we have a lot of berries ripening,” he said. Marcus said he hopes the pick-your-own harvest will last into the second week of July, but customers should call ahead for field conditions.
“We haven’t been growing strawberries as long as Sand Hill,” he said. Marcus said his berry fields have previously been used for other crops.
“I laid the mulch on pretty healthy,” Marcus said. “Then the [wild] turkeys came and scratched through the oat and wheat straw mulch. I raked it back on and that regulates the soil temperature so it doesn’t get the extremes that exposed soil would get.”
“They’re a challenging crop to grow organically, because of the pests,” he said. “The scale you can do it at – you have to figure out what fits on your land base so you can rotate them adequately, so you don’t get a buildup of soil-borne pathogens. I’m really small. I’ll probably have to always be small.”
Marcus said his harvest last year yielded approximately 4000 to 5000 pounds of strawberries per acre.
“I think you can do better than that,” he said. “That’s what I’m striving for.” He said the challenge in farming is to produce a better quality crop with a higher yield on the same amount of land.
“That’s not by cramming it in,” Marcus said. “It’s the way that you care for it, the way that you manage it. Pay attention to soil and the nutrient needs of the crop.”
Marcus said there is a “real demand for organic strawberries,” but farmers using conventional methods in Maine do not generally use the methods that have landed strawberries on the organic.org list of produce with the highest pesticide residues, called “the dirty dozen.”
While strawberries are thin-skinned and generally absorb pesticides, herbicides and other inputs, Marcus said strawberries’ inclusion on the list comes from the practices of large-scale growers in California, where fields are fumigated to kill all biological elements in the soil, covered with plastic, and treated with synthetic fertilizers.
“People shouldn’t assume conventional strawberry growers in Maine have bad practices,” Marcus said.
In Jefferson, farmer Robert “Jigger” Clark said he has already opened his pick-your-own operation. He said the no-till zone method he uses, combined with the practice of mulching with wood shavings is yielding an excellent crop.
“The no-till machine doesn’t plow the ground,” Clark said. He uses a liquid nitrogen-phosphate-potash fertilizer, and sometimes uses herbicides on the peas he rotates with his berries.
Clark left the peas to rot and planted the fields with oats in September. When the oats were 2 to 3 feet tall, frost killed the plants, leaving a mulch that helped protect the new strawberry plants.
After the first year, the plants produce for picking. Clark said he expects to get three years’ harvest from a plant.
Customers planning to pick their own berries should call ahead for field conditions.
Sheepscot General can be reached at 549-5185. To reach Clark Farms, call 549-3363.
