If you love strawberries, you should probably thank a Golden State farmer, because about 90% of American strawberries grow in California. Sprinkled onto yogurt or plucked straight from a fruit tray, sweet strawberries are one of spring’s greatest delights. It’s no wonder we adore them: They’re equally at home on salad or in shortcake, and each berry comes with its own leafy handle!
To learn more about this fan-favorite spring crop, we sat down with Emiliano Cisneros of Better Produce, a second-generation California strawberry farmer. Emiliano’s dad, Juan Cisneros, started the farm in 1989 with just six acres of berries. Today, it covers more than 1,000 acres of conventional and organic strawberries, organic bush berries, chili peppers, and squash.
The California Strawberry Commission lists five main strawberry-growing regions: Salinas, Watsonville, Santa Maria, Oxnard, and Orange County. They all produce delicious fruit! The FruitGuys sources berries from across the state for our spring fruit box deliveries. These are just a few of our favorite family-owned California strawberry farms.
Look for berries from these farms and beyond in our fruit boxes.
You can find California strawberries for sale year-round, but spring is their peak season. Farms in Salinas, Watsonville, and Orange County typically harvest from late spring through fall, while farms in Oxnard and Santa Maria can harvest throughout the year.
Different farms use different techniques to keep their strawberry harvests going. Some farmers, like Leo Diaz of Bonita Farms, use hoop houses to protect their berry plants from the weather and extend the growing season.
At Better Produce, Emiliano and his family can usually rely on the area’s natural climate to keep the berries happy. Their plants produce two yields each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, with enough berries between to keep filling orders.
Other farms are exploring innovative solutions to extend the growing season, like growing strawberries hydroponically. In a hydroponic system, farmers can plant their strawberries in buckets, bags, or tables at varying heights, and the berries grow in water instead of in soil. Farmers often tuck them into hoop houses to protect them from the weather. Emiliano told us that this setup is costly but could ultimately make picking strawberries easier and more efficient, because workers don’t need to bend over as far to reach the plants. Hydroponic systems may also require fewer pesticides and reduce water use.
Yep, that’s right. There’s more than one kind of strawberry! JSM Organics—which supplies The FruitGuys with organic California strawberries—grows at least a half-dozen varieties, including super-sweet, irregularly-shaped Chandlers and shiny, semi-firm Sweet Anns. Better Produce also grows multiple types.
“We get the best varieties from the best nurseries that grow these plants,” Emiliano said, adding that his favorite strawberry varieties are 3169, Alturas, and Albion. 3169s are very sweet, Alturas strawberries are large with a well-rounded flavor, and Albions have a nice hit of acid.
“You can almost taste the punch of [the acid] hitting your taste buds,” he explained.
Weather and labor are two of the biggest challenges for growing strawberries in California. The fruit is very fragile, so farmers need to handle it with care. That means crossing their fingers for good weather without excess heat, cold, or rain and picking every berry by hand.
“Berries are very delicate. You need to take care of them a lot, as if they were your babies,” Emiliano explained.
He added, “Berries really only thrive in a certain climate like Santa Maria: not too hot, not too cold, but right in the middle, a Mediterranean climate. When it’s too cold, the plant gets stressed. It freezes, and the fruit gets hard and brittle, and the quality is just not as good. Similarly, if it gets really hot, the berries start to get mushy. The leaves get burnt, and the plant becomes distressed and starts dying slowly.”
Santa Maria and the other strawberry-growing regions of California have that perfect Goldilocks climate. But even there, the delicate berries need to be picked by hand. Emiliano works on the business side of Better Produce today, but as a 15-year-old, he spent a summer working in the fields picking strawberries and stacking boxes of berries on trucks.
“I’m very thankful for that. It really opened my eyes to how difficult that job is and how thankful we should be, not just for strawberries but for all produce that at some point has to be hand-picked,” he said.
While you can buy California strawberries year-round, the best time is in the spring! That’s when The FruitGuys adds them to our Western fruit mixes and sells them by the case to workplaces nationwide. To get fresh strawberries and other seasonal fruits delivered to your office, check out our fruit delivery subscription options. They make it easy to enjoy strawberries in season in California and beyond.
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