Pick Your Own Strawberries

Fresh fruits and veggies are great for you and delicious tasting. You can get your fresh produce from the store, but nothing beats produce fresh from the garden. In the winter how can you beat home canned or frozen produce that has come fresh from the garden?

Growing your own is the least expensive way to get your produce, though there is a time trade off. Ideally I'd love to be able to plant and preserve all the fruits and vegetable we need. We are not to this point, yet. It is our first year gardening here. The garden is only so big. We hope to expand our garden a bit at a time to meet our needs, but even if we expand, some plants, like strawberries, don't produce well the first year. Maybe some day we will be able to grow all our own fruits and vegetables, but for now we do what we can and buy the rest.

If I can't get my produce from my garden, the next best thing is from the farmer's field. "Pick your own" farms are almost as good as your own garden. It is still the freshest you can get, and it is inexpensive, compared to the grocery stores. Recently, we went to a "pick your own" fruit and vegetable farm to pick strawberries. Here is a comparison of prices

Pick Your Own - $13 for 8 quarts or about $1.09 a pound
They Pick (at the same farm) - $28 for 8 quarts or about $2.34 a pound
Normal grocery "sale " price in my area - $2.50 a pound (though Aldi did have them for $0.99 this week)
The price difference isn't that much for the already picked berries, but the taste is worth the trip to the farm.

But is the significant price difference between pick your own and already picked worth your time? Only you can decide that. For me, the answer is yes. I went with my three oldest (8, 5, 3) and it was a fun outing for us. The younger two pretty much just ate berries. (Should I figure the free lunch into my cost comparison?) The oldest actually picked quite a few. In a couple hours we picked 16 quarts.

Sixteen quarts isn't enough to keep my family in strawberries long, but we did eat a bunch fresh and freeze some too. I would love to go again and pick more for jam and freezing. Should you decide to go, here are some hints to help get the most from it.

1. Go early in the morning.
There are less people there. The temperatures are more comfortable, and it may be my imagination, but the berries just taste better then.

2. What to pick.
Pick berries that are completely red, but still firm. Soft berries will be mush before you get them home, and will be moldy soon.

3. Plan for your time after picking.
It takes as long (or even longer) to prepare the berries as it does to pick them. You'll want to prepare them as soon as possible (within two days) so plan accordingly. If you want to make a lot of jam or freeze a lot of berries, it may be better to make several trips, instead of trying to get all the berries at one time. (Assuming the farm is not too far away.)

4. Storage
If you can't get to the berries the same day. Store them in the refrigerator. Do not wash first.

More helpful hints about pick your own strawberries.


Produce from your garden is the best. But since we can't all garden, or garden enough to meet our needs, produce from the field is the next best choice. If you pick your own, you will get far better quality for a fraction of the cost. Even if you can't pick your own, I encourage you to buy from your local farm. You will get the same superior quality, at a cost comparable to the grocery store, while supporting the farmers in your area. I hope you too have been enjoying some farm fresh strawberries this season.


strawberries, food