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Growers Shift Away From Traditional Plantings, Focus On Fall Harvest and Organics Summer Planted Acres up 33%, Organic Acreage Up 91% The California Strawberry Commission has published their annual "2006 Acreage Survey Results" listing planting totals and varietal trends in California for 2006. Surprisingly, total strawberry acreage planted in the fall for winter and spring production is up only 0.7% over 2005. But, total acres planted in the summer for fall production is up 33% statewide, up 234% in Santa Maria over 2005. Organic strawberry acreage is up a whopping 91% to a total of 965 acres, 95 in Santa Maria Unusual (?) Weather Culls Back Early Glut Of Berries Berry season starts early in Santa Maria, Then Slows To A Crawl (3/22/06) After tending to stressed plants in February's heat wave when temps edged close to 90F, we've experienced the coldest March since 1921. The threat of early season overproduction has vanished with multiple late spring frosts, scattered hail storms and even some snow flurries in parts of Santa Maria. Most plants in the field appear healthy, though growers are culling quite a bit of rain and hail damaged fruit for the next week or two. We see plenty of good quality green berries and flowers ripening soon, but are also watching weather forecasts for more rain in the next week or two. Here's the weather in our fields right now

VIF Plastic Making a Comeback

Better compounds and losing methyl-bromide drive resurgence

(3/17/04) Newer and more stable resin compounds have yielded a Virtually Impermeable plastic FILM (VIF) mulch that performs almost as well as conventional low barrier film for strawberry bed mulch. VIF mulches have been used for many years and were often found to be too brittle and difficult to install on raised strawberry beds. Newer film compounds, however, are working very well in many test fields in California with remarkable results. Manznaita Berry Farms, for example, planted 40 acres of berries in VIF covered beds (see photo below) with some intersting results. Rates of soil fumigant Inline(R) were decreased from 28 gallons per acre to 18, and still resulted in better weed control with less fumigant applied.

Update on Machine Assisted Harvesting

Machine harvesting results vary from district to district

(3/15/05) Manzanita Berry Farms has completed three years of field testing newly developed harvest aid machines and has found them to be uneconomical in the Santa Maria area . The machines are designed to aid the picker by requiring less walking, leading to fewer slip and fall accidents and increased productivity. For the grower, there should be increased productivity and savings from fewer workers' compensation injury claims. Oxnard district growers are experiencing remarkable success using the machines. Some Santa Maria farms, however, have not realized the same increased producivity. Reasons for this are not thoroughly understood, but Manzanita Berry Farms has decided not to use the machines for harvesting in 2005.