Weather Impacts Strawberry Season

The frigid winter followed by a cool spring will also impact strawberry season. Nancy Bauer, from Bauer’s Berry Farm in Champlin says the outlook is not quite as rosy as normal, but they do expect berries to be ready in a few weeks.

“We had it cold for a long time before we had good snow cover,” said Nancy Bauer, who runs Bauer Berry Farm with her husband Bill. “Some of the plants just bit the dust. We have a lot of empty spots in our row. That didn’t make the season later, it made our crop outlook not quite as rosy as it normally would be.”

White flowers are blooming and some green berries are visible on the plants, but they aren’t ripe yet.

As a result, the berries are still a few weeks away from picking at their 45-acre farm in Champlin.

Best-case scenario for a good crop is a string of sun-splashed days and warm weather.

“We are calling ourselves maybe a week and a half behind,” Bauer said. “Things accelerate and decelerate, depending on where the weather is. So we’re predicting somewhere around the 20th of June that we could be open for red berries. Right now they’re very, very green and tiny.”

Because farmers don’t know the exact date when picking starts, they want people to call or check their web page to see if they are open.