UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The good news about Pennsylvania's strawberry crop this year, according to a small fruit expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is that it is likely to be large. The bad news is that it will be a week or two late.

This year's cool, cloudy spring has slowed the growth and ripening of strawberries across the state, observes senior extension associate Kathy Demchak, who specializes in berry production.

"We just need some warm, sunny days to get the berries to ripen," she says. "After last year's drought, the growers had a lot of hope that higher moisture levels in the soil would result in a great crop, but the cold, wet weather has delayed the season. If the weather stays cool, we definitely will have a longer harvest season this year."

The height of the Pennsylvania strawberry harvest usually occurs during the first week or two of June, depending on location in the state, Demchak points out. But this year, it will be at least a week later.

Pennsylvania has more strawberry producers than any state besides California, according to the USDA's Census of Agriculture. But because most of these strawberry growers have small diversified operations, in 2002 Pennsylvania ranked seventh in strawberries acreage, with 1,300 acres of berries produced, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Pennsylvania ranked fourth nationally in the value of fresh-market strawberry production, with a crop worth just slightly over $10 million.

"The last three years, our strawberry crop has been increasing in value, and we were hoping to continue that trend," says Demchak. "This year's crop should be a good one, but we are now concerned about diseases such as gray mold reducing berry quality if the wet weather continues through harvest."

The hard winter was actually good for strawberry plants, she believes. "The snow protected the strawberries," she says. "It is when we have a cold winter with no snow that the most crown damage occurs."

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EDITORS: Contact Kathy Demchak at 814-863-2303) or by e-mail at kdemchak@psu.edu.

Contact:

Gary Abdullah gxa2@psu.edu Jeff Mulhollem jjm29@psu.edu 814-863-2719 814-863-9877 fax #166