strawberries

If you want to taste the loveliest, juiciest strawberries around, look no further than The Co-operative Farms. Grown on our own farm in Blairgowrie, Perthshire and packed at our pack house at Longforgan, Dundee, our strawberries are delicious.

And because we are the farmer we oversee every detail of the growing process, so you can be sure that when you sit down to eat your Co-operative strawberries smothered in fresh cream, what you’re tasting is literally ‘the cream of the crop’.

In the UK strawberries are in season around June to September, so look out for the British Farming variety in selected stores around this time.

planting

Every year, 450,000 strawberry plants are planted by hand. 26 acres grow in the soil and a further 25 acres grow on tabletops in grow bags. The strawberries are housed in 300 covered tunnels that protect them from the elements and keep quality intact. As they grow, our plants are trickle-irrigated. This system, controlled by computer, not only ensures the plants are watered when they need to be but also that the water is used as efficiently as possible.

tending

Strawberries are very vulnerable to disease and pests, such as mildew, slugs and aphids, so we have to monitor our crops constantly. If need be, pesticides approved by The Co-operative Farms are applied but good farming practices are used at all times to limit pesticide use. The long summer days and slow growing season at Blairgowrie mean the berries take longer to ripen and so have longer to develop their delicious, succulent flavour.

harvesting

Harvesting takes place in the earlier, cooler part of the day. The berries are put straight into punnets on trays in the field to prevent them from bruising. The pickers are trained to spot strawberries that do not meet quality requirements. Each punnet is temporarily labelled so we can trace it back to the individual worker who picked them.

From there the crop is brought quickly to Longforgan packhouse where further quality checks are made. The strawberries are then lidded, labelled and shipped out to our own stores.

eating

Cream, ice cream and yoghurt are natural accompaniments for your fresh, British strawberries, though purists may prefer to have them neat. For the braver palette, black pepper, basil or balsamic vinegar is said to bring out the flavour.

For a treat, why not try them dipped in our Fairtrade chocolate? Or quarter, dust with icing sugar, sprinkle with some sparkling wine and chill in the fridge for an hour or so for a tipsy indulgence.