Strawberries and Caneberries

In case any of you are wondering what the strawberries look like right now with the fires close by (about 30 miles away) burning, I took some pictures of one of the test plots I happened to be harvesting this afternoon. Influence is negligible, a bit of the fruit that can be washed off.

Hi folks, I've had some questions lately on how the summer heat has been affecting strawberries, so I thought I'd get some pictures together and accompany them with some comments and insight. Bottom line is that the heat is really killing the berries.

When we talk of berry production in the Monterey Bay area, we also talk of using a lot of plastic - from the bed covers for strawberries, to the tunnels for caneberries to the weedmats in the anchor rows of those tunnels. Not to even mention the inputs for clamshells.

Colleague Surendra Dara has moved his massive extension event from outdoors in the field to online this year.

I got called out a few weeks by the farm manager and the PCA of a raspberry field suffering from a darkish mold growing on the fruit.