‘Too big to fit in your mouth’: sunny spring delivers crop of ‘giant’ UK strawberries

The UK’s sunny spring climate has supplied “perfect” stipulations to supply strawberries so giant you “cannot fit them in your mouth”, UK growers have stated.

With just about 20 years’ enjoy, Bartosz Pinkosz, the operations director on the Summer Berry Company, has “never seen anything like it”. The strawberries being harvested this month through the main grower are whoppers due to the mix of numerous sunshine and funky nights.

“We had the darkest January and February since the 70s but then the brightest March and April since 1910,” he stated. “From March onwards it was really kind of perfect for tunnel strawberries. The berries are between 10% and 20% larger.”

Berries grown on the corporate’s farm in Colworth, West Sussex, are bought through the entire giant outlets and, whilst sizes range, Pinkosz stated its strawberry vegetation are yielding “giant” 50g berries you “cannot fit in your mouth”. However, the typical is a extra modest 30g.

Nick Marston, the chair of the business frame British Berry Growers, showed the (fruit) salad days forward for strawberry enthusiasts. “We’re seeing very good size, shape, appearance, and most of all, really great flavour and sugar content, which is what consumers want when they buy British strawberries,” he stated.

He added: “I’m always a little cautious of saying strawberries are 20% bigger because there’s an average involved and some crops will be slightly smaller than others. But I think it would be fair to say the very nice sunshine, the cool overnight temperatures, are ideal for fruit development.”

The blockbuster berries within the Summer Berry Company’s tunnels have been “tastier and firmer”, Pinkosz stated, since the cool nights enabled the fruit to ripen slowly. “The slower the development of the fruits, the more time to expand the cells and create the bigger berry. What we are now seeing is something I have never seen in 19 years, which is consistently larger berries.

“It has been a perfect start to the strawberry season for us … I have genuinely never seen a harvest produce such large berries consistently. Some are supersized – growing to the size of plums or even kiwi fruits.”

The sunny, very dry spring, with the warmest begin to May on file, delivered a glut of early strawberries, aubergines and tomatoes originally of May. But because the dry stipulations persist there are fears that Britain is heading for a drought this summer time.

Marston stated the spectre of water shortages can be a purpose of outrage, in particular for growers within the south-east of England. However, he stated berries have been grown the usage of drip irrigation so water used to be used very sparingly.

As Wimbledon approaches subsequent month, tennis enthusiasts may well be handled to juicy, supersize strawberries for a 2nd yr in a row after rainy and darkish stipulations slowed rising instances final yr.