Strawberries bitten by frost
The week’s late spring frost threatened to eat up domestic strawberry crop While the recent freezing temperatures put a damper on Danes’ spring fever, they were a fight for life and death for the country’s berry and fruit farmers. Because...
While the recent freezing temperatures put a damper on Danes’ spring fever, they were a fight for life and death for the country’s berry and fruit farmers. Because once berry bushes and fruit trees blossom – as many did in last month’s warm days – a single night of frost can eat up the whole crop.
Strawberries – the star of Denmark’s summer crop and a much-savoured summer delicacy – are especially vulnerable to the sort of late frost the country experienced this week, when temperatures around the country fell below freezing on Monday and Tuesday nights. The apples, pears, cherries and plums were also threatened.
“If the strawberry plant is touched with frost, you can see it at once,” Ole Scharff, a strawberry consultant for Gartnerirådgivningen, an organisation for the country’s commercial nurseries, told public broadcaster DR.
However, it will be a full week before berry and fruit farmers know for sure how much their crops were damaged by the late night frosts of the past week.
“It is too early to say how hard the plants were hit, but the early blossoming kinds took it the hardest,” added Scharff.
While sun and summery temperatures around 20 degrees appear to be back for awhile, it may already be too late for the strawberries. If the late frost managed to bite the plants, there will not be as many fresh Danish strawberries, cherries, apples and pears in the markets this spring and summer.