Fulton Farms - Strawberries

Home Grown Strawberries

While strawberries are not our first crop in the spring, they are the one that most people await every year. They make their first appearance in late May and can continue until late June if the weather is good. Our workers are in the fields daily to pick for the Market providing a constant supply of fresh strawberries for our customers.

In early June, our attention turns to supplying strawberries for many of the vendors at Troy's annual strawberry festival. During the festival, vendors show up at our barn at 6 a.m. to pick up the day's supplies. By the time they are all on their way, our regular customers start arriving to buy strawberries for their family gatherings.

Strawberries come in several varieties and all make their appearance in the market. Some are the large bright berries that look so good in a fresh pie. Others are smaller, darker and sweeter and make wonderful jams. Some varieties carry their color all the way through while others have paler centers even when perfectly ripe. The first strawberries of the season are frequently larger than later berries because they took longer to ripen and had more time to grow. Regardless of which varieties you buy, they all taste wonderful.

Our field workers pick the strawberries directly into the quart baskets that are sold in the Farm Market. This means they are not bruised when transferred from one container to another. The quart baskets are placed on carriers which are stacked in a refrigerated truck where they remain cool until placed on our strawberry table.

Strawberries are available first in our Market and a week or so later our fields open for you to pick your own. It's a task that can be shared by the entire family and the rewards enjoyed later over shortcake or ice cream.

We have approximately forty acres of strawberries with roughly 15,000 plants per acre or six hundred thousand plants producing on average a total of 280 tons of strawberries. That's a lot of strawberries.

The strawberries are planted in wide rows with a two to three foot wide path between each row. This allows you to move easily along the row when you pick your berries. The first year strawberries are planted, they do not produce berries. The first crop comes the following spring.

During the winter, the strawberry plants are covered with straw and plastic to protect them from the worst of the winter weather. In March, we uncover the plants as they react to the lengthening days and start to grow. The straw that protected them during the winter is moved to the paths where it acts as a ground cover to keep down weeds and mud.

During April we keep an eye on the plants watching for blossoms. Once they appear in abundance, we have an approximate date for our first berries - six weeks. Of course, the weather plays a role in that date. Cool, rainy days mean the first berries take longer to ripen. Warm, sunny days mean that they are ready to pick much sooner.

Ohio is not known for moving smoothly from winter to spring. Frosts are common in late March and early April and our strawberry plants are vulnerable to those frosts. When the overnight temperatures drop, our farm workers spend the night protecting the plants and blooms. We use our irrigation system to spray water over the plants. The water freezes encasing the plants in a protective layer of ice. The next morning when the sun warms the air, the ice melts and the plant is again exposed to the warm rays. A frost that might otherwise have destroyed a large portion of the strawberry crop has done no lasting damage.

Later in the season, the same irrigation system that protected the plants from the frost will help counter the effects of a hot dry summer by providing water to keep them healthy for another year.

All the strawberries on a plant do not ripen at the same time so it's very common to see large red berries on the same plant as small green ones. Once the weather is warm, those small green berries will grow and ripen in only a few days. Late in the season when the June sun is hot, they can ripen in a single day.

While we sell literally thousands of quarts in the Farm Market every year, we sell nearly as many to people who prefer to pick their own berries. Picking strawberries has become a family tradition for many who remember the days before the Market opened and the only way to get strawberries was to pick them. Children and grandchildren have shared that experience and it remains a family activity for many today.

In the days when all the strawberries were picked by the customers, the strawberries were sold by the pound and people checked out at wagons equipped with a scale and a cash drawer. Times have changed in many ways, but there have been only a few changes in the strawberry fields.

Today people pick in four-quart buckets and pay by the bucket but little else has changed. They still drive out to the fields and park before making their way down the paths between plants to find a likely spot to pick. Parents with toddlers still joke about whether they have to pay for the berries a toddle ate while helping pick and we still laugh and say "no, that's ok". People still go home smiling at the thought of fresh strawberry shortcake for dinner that night.

It should come as no surprise that the entire Fulton family is put to work to help pick from time to time. Even the pet pig gets into the act.

Fulton Farms
2393 State Route 202
Troy, Ohio 45373
937 335-6983