Fresh fruit and veg tends to get a bit more exciting at this time of year, with wonders like asparagus and strawberries finally in season and becoming much cheaper than they are through the winter months.
If you’ve leapt on the influx of British strawberries well ahead of Wimbledon, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed that they’re particularly massive this year.
It all comes down to growing conditions, which have been nothing short of ‘perfect’ over the last few months.
Across the country we’ve been treated to warm and sunny spring days along with chilly nights, and that’s one of the main reasons why strawberries are 10-20% bigger than usual at the moment.
Advert
Speaking to the Guardian, operations director at the Summer Berry Company, Bartosz Pinkosz, said he had 'never seen anything like it.'
“We had the darkest January and February since the 70s but then the brightest March and April since 1910,' he said. 'From March onwards it was really kind of perfect for tunnel strawberries. The berries are between 10% and 20% larger,” he explained.
The Summer Berry Company’s West Sussex farm is yielding strawberries that are too large to fit in your mouth in one go, and they weigh around 50g. The average strawberry weighs 30g, so you’re getting an extra 66% of the usual weight on top.
Pinkosz said some are even as large as kiwi fruits.
As to why these conditions were so good for strawberry growth, Pinkosz said the nighttime coldness helped them to ripen slowly, while the sunny days gave them all the solar nutrition they could ask for.
“The slower the development of the fruits, the more time to expand the cells and create the bigger berry,” he said. “What we are now seeing is something I have never seen in 19 years, which is consistently larger berries.”
While it’s good news for strawberries, the conditions might be a result of climate change rather than a season-long stroke of good luck weather-wise.
The Met Office has reported that spring 2025 is the sunniest the UK has seen since records began in 1910. It added: “Now, seven of the top ten sunniest springs on records for the UK since 1910, have occurred since the year 2000.”
The last record for sunshine hours was set in 2020, with 2025 beating the spring of our first Covid lockdown by four hours with a total of 630.
Some experts have also warned that the persistent sunshine and limited rain might be here to stay across the summer, with suggestions that we could be staring down the barrel of a summertime drought.
Rachael Davis