Ireland’s extended sunny weather has created “absolutely perfect” conditions to produce “much sweeter” strawberries, fruit growers say.
Jimmy Kearns, owner of Kearns Fruit Farm in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, who has been picking berries this year since March 25th, said: “It’s probably as good a season as I’ve ever seen.”
One grower in the UK said the warm weather had resulted in average berry sizes that were 10-20 per cent larger than the norm. But Mr Kearns, whose firm started picking fruit for jam production back in the 1950s, said the smaller the berry, the sweeter the bite.
“Generally the first couple of picks can be very big from the warm weather but as you move on into the second and third week of picking and it’s still very warm, the berries are inclined to ripen small but they’re much sweeter,” he said.
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“The berries are ripening fully. You’d often see a berry and it’d be three quarters red. But if you look in the supermarkets now you’ll see all the fruit 100 per cent red and juicy and that’s what makes them sweeter.”
Mr Kearns added: “The season has been absolutely perfect for us as fruit growers. Hopefully we’ll have a nice summer like this and it’ll keep going until the end of August.”
The sunshine means demand for the fruit is “fantastic”, he said. “No matter how much you pick in the day here it’s gone, it’s sold.”
Earlier this month, Met Éireann predicted Ireland is “highly likely” to have a warmer-than-average summer, forecasting that temperatures in May, June and July will be between 0.5-1 degree above normal.
Too much heat, however, can prove problematic for strawberries.
“When you go above 20 degrees, strawberries don’t like that,” said Mr Kearns, adding that “double the amount of water” is being used to quench the red berries’ thirst.
“The plant in these high temperatures is absolutely taking up all that water.”
Cyril Wheelock, another farmer from Ireland’s famed strawberry county in the southeast, can vouch for the quality of this season’s crop.
The Village at Wheelock’s, a restaurant and shop complex also based in Enniscorthy, has seen hundreds of eager strawberry fanatics coming to pick the berries on their farm over the past number of weeks.
“Only yesterday I had a lady there as I was putting strawberries on a shelf, and she said strawberries are exceptionally nice this year. I was saying to her it’s the warm days and the cold nights that are making it,” he said.
“We’re picking probably three weeks now at this stage,” adds Mr Wheelock.
Recognising that people gravitate towards larger fruit, he advises that “the smaller ones can taste that bit nicer”.
