WATSONVILLE, CA – The strawberry has long held heavy symbolic weight for love and passion. To gain more insight into the current state of the romantic berry, both in the market and in the ground, I recently spoke with Dan Crowley of Well•Pict, who shared his take on the season thus far. Dan shared how the berry grower has managed to create a constant supply of strawberries to bolster sales through Valentine's Day and into early spring. With the holiday fast approaching, the company already has its dance card full.

"There are already Valentine's Day ads that are in place—locked and loaded as we like to say," Crowley exclaimed. "We have them for both areas of production: Florida and Oxnard. Our current volumes in Florida will hold for several weeks, running through mid-February. At that time, we will probably start seeing a decrease, ever so slightly, every week after that as we move into March."

To offer consistent supplies of strawberries through the season, Well•Pict grows two types of berries in Florida, Florida Beauty and Radiance, using two different methods—plug plants and bare roots.

"Where one might be falling off, the other will pick up the slack, and the end result to a retailer is steady production," Crowley continued. "Suffice to say there will be ample volume through the month of February and into the first half of March."

Out West, the berry season is just warming up.

"We are underway with our crop but not anywhere near the high numbers that we'll see once this weather warms up as we get further into spring. As far as current promotions go, our biggest push from out here, is our stem berries," Crowley explained.

And some crop the stem berries are!

"Valentine's Day is the biggest stem holiday for us and for retail as well," said Crowley, "It is a phenomenal thing where retailers will bring stem berries into their back rooms and chocolate dip them and showcase the berries in three packs and six packs. These items have been very well-received and have grown in popularity over the past several years. Consumer demand for strawberries has been very high and continues to grow."

Though the grower faces some seasonal difficulties, Dan shared that, "You don't have optimal growing conditions in the month of January-let's face it, but we have a staggered, integrated growing system that Well•Pict has implemented to allow us to largely mitigate negative seasonal trends."

"In Florida our varieties all have their distinct peaks," Crowley explained. "They're staggered, which, in the end, if you are looking at a graph, you have volume over time, and each of the distinct peaks between the two varieties and two types—plants vs. plugs—and what it does, is it gives you a nice plateau. One of those varieties will fall off; the other will pick up. We put the plug plants in the ground early, so you can get an early crop to hit those high markets in December—and then they typically fall off this time of year where the berry plants will come in high production and then they'll cycle down and then the plug plants come back into production."

Crowley reflected on raspberry conditions as well. He is excited to reveal a longer growing season for raspberries; a project which has been years in development.

"Our raspberry program in the past has been strictly out of the district up here in Watsonville, which is basically a nine-month crop—springtime through the fall. We hadn't had any raspberries in wintertime in years past, but what we've done differently, and we've been working on it for several years, is having production out of Oxnard. So, we have that category twelve months a year because of the new program we have down at Oxnard."

With berry growers rising to meet the high consumer demand, we look forward to seeing new innovations from Well•Pict, and we hope you'll stay with us at AndKnowUKnow as we follow these berry developments.

Well•Pict