Post by Alan on Sept 13, 2008 22:52:20 GMT -5
Right now Kim and I have about 80 alpine strawberries in five gallon nursery pots inside the greenhouse for this winter. Every week they recieve a bit of worm compost/castings and some worm casting tea and have recieved a bit of bone meal, blood meal, and wood ash. The strawberries are of mixed varieties of red, white, and yellow and though they started out small and not very productive, now I've got the fertilizing and watering routine down to a science and the production and size keeps increasing.
We are now getting larger alpine strawberries and selecting for seed off of those. These are aproaching the size and width of a U.S. quarter and are absolutely delicious. They are also producing a number of these niced sized berries daily by the plant. Recently I have allowed a number of people and potential customers to try out these wonderful little berries, give their opinion and to also let me know what they thought the value of small quantities of them would be.
All in all it has come out pretty economically promising to grow, pic, and market these little berries despite their color, size, and keeping eccentricies.
A normal gallon of strawberries goes from $14-18 a gallon here. We feel confident that we can get that price for a half gallon and $25-30 a gallon. We also figure about $6-7 for a normal small strawberry basket of these tasty berries. We will probably accomplish most of this marketing by special order only, though with time and experimentation, exploitation at the local farmers market is possible.
In that light we plant to plant a small sized area with these strawberries come next spring and to always have less than is demanded to start with in order to increase demand for this product and to put it in perspective as a rare, labor intensive, specialty crop. Of course we will also continue to grow them into the fall, winter, and spring in the greenhouse where they will bloom and produce continuiously.
Have any other market farmers attempted this?
We are now getting larger alpine strawberries and selecting for seed off of those. These are aproaching the size and width of a U.S. quarter and are absolutely delicious. They are also producing a number of these niced sized berries daily by the plant. Recently I have allowed a number of people and potential customers to try out these wonderful little berries, give their opinion and to also let me know what they thought the value of small quantities of them would be.
All in all it has come out pretty economically promising to grow, pic, and market these little berries despite their color, size, and keeping eccentricies.
A normal gallon of strawberries goes from $14-18 a gallon here. We feel confident that we can get that price for a half gallon and $25-30 a gallon. We also figure about $6-7 for a normal small strawberry basket of these tasty berries. We will probably accomplish most of this marketing by special order only, though with time and experimentation, exploitation at the local farmers market is possible.
In that light we plant to plant a small sized area with these strawberries come next spring and to always have less than is demanded to start with in order to increase demand for this product and to put it in perspective as a rare, labor intensive, specialty crop. Of course we will also continue to grow them into the fall, winter, and spring in the greenhouse where they will bloom and produce continuiously.
Have any other market farmers attempted this?
Good luck ;D At 30$, that will make a nice 0.03$ per hour salary 
