A worker picks strawberries at Hugh Lowe Farms, near Maidstone, Kent. British strawberry farmers say 2025’s record-breaking spring sunshine and warm days has yielded the cream of the crop, with the harvested fruit bigger and sweeter than usual. — BEN STANSALL/AFP
British strawberry farmers say this year’s record-breaking spring sunshine and warm days have yielded the cream of the crop, with a bigger and sweeter harvest than usual.
Long periods of sun and cool nights provided “perfect” conditions for the strawberry harvest, according to James Miller from WB Chambers Farms.
The dry and pleasant weather also boosted insect pollination, which further improves the quality and shape of the berries, Miller explained.
“They’re bigger and sweeter this year than we’ve seen in previous years,” said Miller, the commercial director for one of the country’s biggest berry producers.
A seasonal worker picks strawberries at Hugh Lowe Farms.
At one farm near Dartford in Kent, southeast England, rows of strawberry plants drooped with the weight of the gleaming red fruit housed in insulating polytunnels.
As farmhands made their way meticulously down the semi-circular white tunnels, punnets were filled with ripe strawberries – some the size of small fists.
The weather has resulted in “super berry size and super flavour,” said Nick Marston, chairman of British Berry Growers, which represents most of the Britain’s soft fruit farms.
“I’ve been in the berry industry for 30 years and this is one of the best springs I’ve ever seen, in terms of both the weather and also the crop,” Marston said.
Miller says long periods of sun and cool nights provided ‘perfect’ conditions for the strawberry harvest. — HANNAH MCKAY/Reuters
Better place
This year Britain, experienced the warmest spring in terms of mean temperatures since records began in 1884, the Met Office announced recently.
It was also the second-sunniest and the driest spring in over a century for England, known for its damp climate.
Southeast England received only 30%-50% of its average spring rainfall, according to the Met Office, raising fears of drought for many farmers.
Human-induced climate change is driving longer-lasting, more intense and more frequent droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events.
A strawberry inside a poly tunnel at Chambers farm near Maidstone, Kent. — HANNAH MCKAY/Reuters
To conserve water, the WB Chambers farm in Dartford uses drip irrigation – which involves water slowly trickling to the roots of the plant through a controlled pipe.
“We’ve reduced our water usage for growing strawberries quite significantly,” Miller said. “So I hope we’re in a better place than others.”
According to Marston, British producers have already sold nearly 21,600 tonnes of strawberries – 5,000 tonnes more than by the same time last year, when the country experienced an overcast spring.
Strawberry plants are seen inside a poly tunnel.
This is in part due to warmer conditions yielding an earlier crop than usual, with large and juicy strawberries hitting the shelves in April, rather than May.
But it is also due to a rise in demand when the sun comes out, said Miller, with consumers hankering for British summer classics like strawberries and cream.
“The sun is our biggest salesman,” said Miller. “When the sun picks up, then the demand picks up.” – By AKSHATA KAPOOR/AFP
