Festive food: Strawberries’ sweet journey to the table

John Kraft’s gardens in Coatesville will produce about 500 tonnes of strawberries this season. Picture / Martin Sykes

Those bright red strawberries you've been buying from the supermarket have very likely come from the rolling hills of Coatesville, a rural pocket northwest of Auckland.

But the process that got the heart-shaped berries to the shelves began six months earlier on the slopes of Kraft Berry Gardens. Here, on 12ha tucked away at the end of Goldflats Lane, John Kraft oversees an operation that will have harvested about 500 tonnes of the berries by the time the season ends in late January.

On the day the Herald visits, the mostly Tongan packing staff are putting together 500 crates of strawberries for Foodtown in the large, airy Kraft shed. That's about 150,000 strawberries which will soon be hitting the road in a chiller-equipped truck.

And that's just one day of orders from the supermarket chain, says Mr Kraft, who has been growing strawberries for 25 years. He'll be paid about $2 for each of these punnets.

Growing strawberries is a hugely labour-intensive process, done by hand from planting to grading and packing. Strawberries are not robust enough for machines.

It's also a terribly weather-sensitive crop - last summer's was badly affected by a wet planting season, which meant there were fewer, and thus more expensive, berries on the market.

Nationally, 120 to 130 companies oversee 280ha of strawberry fields, according to industry body Strawberry Growers NZ. This year they will produce about 6600 tonnes, says spokesperson Antonia Crawford.

And we're keen consumers, spending $11.5 million on strawberries in 2001, according to Statistics New Zealand.

Strawberries are members of the rose family (Rosaceae) and bear the botanical name Frugaria, which in Latin means fragrance. First noted in Roman records as wild plants in 200BC, they were being cultivated in gardens by the 13th century.

Strawberries can grow in most parts of New Zealand, but the main growing regions are Auckland, which produces over 40 per cent of the national crop, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Horowhenua and Canterbury.

At Kraft's, the strawberry beds are raised, narrow rows covered with black polythene and running at right angles to the ridgelines. Inside the mounds, buried pipes deliver water and nutrients; the black polythene raises soil temperature, keeps fumigants in and prevents weeds. There's just enough room in between rows to allow someone to walk or crouch.

The soil is prepared in February every year by chemical sterilisation, says Mr Kraft, which is gas-injected through a small tube pushed through the plastic.

Strawberries are "an expensive crop to put in the ground" and vulnerable to root disease. "If you didn't sterilise," says Mr Kraft, who is also SGNZ president, "you'd be broke in a year."

There are three main strawberry types, all of US origin, grown commercially in New Zealand - not that shoppers would know, since the type is never indicated on punnets.

A total of 40 per cent of this year's crop is the cultivar gaviota, a large, shiny, consistently conical berry. Just behind on 39 per cent is the similar camarosa, the variety Mr Kraft grows.

The smaller pajaro (13 per cent), has bright red skin but light red flesh. Minor varieties form the other 8 per cent.

Baby plants arrive in May from a propagator in Katikati, in the Bay of Plenty. About 15cm high with clean roots, they are planted using a knife to simultaneously pierce the plastic and insert the roots into the soil.

Over winter, the self-pollinating plants are sprayed against disease and pests. If any of the plant's white-petalled flowers arrive early they are cut off: "They can hold back the growth of the plant if they are early", says Mr Kraft.

In September, straw is laid between the mounds to prevent dirt splashing onto developing fruit; watery missiles can carry disease and also damage the fruit's appearance.

Kraft's picking season usually starts in the first week of October, but this year's notoriously wet winter and early spring delayed the start for nearly three weeks.

About 50 pickers, their hands encased in latex gloves, carefully pluck every dark red fruit - strawberries don't get sweeter after picking, though they will get redder in hue. It takes the team three days to cover the 12ha, says Kraft; it's hard physical labour, and frankly, he says, Pacific Islanders do it best.

But finding enough pickers is an annual problem, says Mr Kraft; last year he was so short-staffed he had to abandon a couple of fields. That, he says, "breaks your heart".

Fruit numbers and quality peak in about the second and third weeks of December.

Once crates of berries get to the shed, they are offloaded onto a conveyer belt that runs past weighers and packers.

Bruised or squished strawberries, or those misshapen by poor pollination, are rejected - that's about 10 per cent of the crop - but aren't wasted. The berries are hulled, compressed into blocks, frozen, and sold to jam makers such as Watties.

The process from picking to packing to chilling at 1C need take no more than two hours, says Mr Kraft: "You can see the berries reddening as they come down the conveyer". Chiller-equipped trucks collect the crates of berries the same day.

As you browse over the fruit that's arrived at your local market, remember that bigger isn't better: "That's a fallacy," says Mr Kraft. Colour is far more important in picking a perfect strawberry - the deeper red it is, the better the flavour. Be selective, he says, as you pick your punnets. If you want to eat your newly purchased strawberries the same day, leave them at room temperature. If they are on the next day's menu, refrigerate them straight away, taking them out only a couple of hours before use. Eating strawberries cold, says Mr Kraft, "seems to detract from the sweetness".

By the way, he's not tempted to scoff strawberries while being around them all day; but a bowl of strawberries with ice cream in the evening goes down very nicely.

According to SGNZ, the strawberry is the best sort of fruit for those wanting to lose weight without hunger as they have the lowest glycaemic load of any fruit - that is, they raise your blood sugar less.

Also, says SGNZ's Mrs Crawford, strawberries are high in folate, the B vitamin which was described in the British Medical Journal as a "leading contender for panacea of the 21st century" with its depression-relieving, memory-enhancing qualities.

The berries contain antioxidants, to combat pollution, and anti-cancer nutrients. Strawberry seeds are also high in zinc, the nutrient that aids growth and boosts your sex life.

Way back in the 17th century, English writer William Butler apparently declared that "doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did".

As Kiwis tuck into mountains of succulent strawberries this Christmas, they will probably agree.