This year will be remembered as a challenging soft fruit season. Combined with structural damage for some from the snow in March and a very late growing season, things hadn’t started that well. When the summer arrived it came suddenly. Most of the early strawberry crops did well, but as the summer progressed crops suffered due to the intense heat. Yields were reduced and fruit quality was under pressure. Of all the cultivars grown ‘Malling Centenary’ seemed to tolerate the hot conditions better. Some of the everbearing cultivars went into what’s known as ‘thermo dormancy’. This is a physiological condition brought on by a combination of long summer days length and high temperatures. As a result, the plant produces very little fruit. All of this drama resulted in a shortage of strawberries, particularly from June. A similar trend was seen with raspberry crops with earlier crops doing very well and mid-summer crops struggling in the heat. The good news is that strawberry and raspberry sales were superb with very high demand all summer long. ✽
