HOW WE GROW 

In recent years we have invested heavily into producing strawberries on a ‘Table-Top System’, which means you can pick without bending down! The plants are grown in bags filled with coconut coir, and using different varieties and techniques, we can spread the harvest across the whole summer!

We crop the strawberries for two years, and when the plants finish producing, the coir is emptied onto our fields and incorporated into the soil, and we donate the plants to local schools!

We also have areas of potted raspberries and blackberries, which we grow in coir (coconut fibres) and replant on a three-year cycle using unique long cane material, helping to give a much better spread for our PYO’ers to harvest, reduce soil-borne diseases and stop the soil from being degraded every time we replant!

Why do we use tunnels? Polytunnels are vital in creating the optimum growing conditions for your favourite fruits. They protect our crops from frosts and cold weather, which slow down fruit development, AND they save the plants and fruits from rain, which can spread disease and damages the soft skins of our strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. But, most of all, it means we can pick in the rain without getting wet!

Although we don’t grow the crop organically, we use an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) policy which employs natural predators and methods to help with pest control to keep out-of-season pesticide spraying limited. In the picking season, we don’t spray insecticides, opting for distributing and encouraging natural predators (hoverfly larvae/parasitic wasps/and others), who prey and feed on insect pests like aphids and mites – just like they do in the wild! We also use seaweed-based fertiliser sprays, which act as a natural foliar feed instead of complex chemicals to keep our plants producing the tastiest fruit!