From slip to strawberry

We get our strawberries from strawberry plants that we breed ourselves.

A strawberry plant makes tendrils with new slips. The tendrils we cut and the new slips are put apart in a field in July.
These little slips grows to nice plants that go into the refrigerator at 1° below zero, to stop the growing process, until we need the plants.

With the help of a machine we fill buckets with special strawberry compost. By hand we put the plants in it.
Then all the buckets go into the glasshouse.

After a few weeks the flowers appear and it’s time to put the bees and the humble-bees in the greenhouse.
These insects take care of the pollination of the flowers. Bees fly with good and sunny weather, humble-bees fly when the weather is dark.

Without good pollination, strawberries are deformed and little.

When the green strawberries come in sight, we pull the strawberry cluster through. That means that we separate the strawberry clusters and the leaves, by means of a thread, for better sunshine on the strawberries and easier picking.

After about 6 weeks the first strawberries are red. A strawberry plant has average three clusters flowering after each other.
The first strawberries of a cluster are big, further in the season they always become smaller.

The picking can start!

The strawberry variety we have is ‘Elsanta’.This variety gives a strong strawberry with a good taste and a delicious flavor. The high production, solidity and keeping qualities from these strawberries makes them very suited for us as grower, but also suited for the market.