Justin Harris
Pioneer Press Staff Writer

Fort Jones, California

June 27, 2007

Page E-1

Strawberry Fields Forever...

Well, maybe not forever but almost as far as the eye can see anyway.

The Lassen Canyon Nursery Strawberry fields stretch across more than 740 acres in the Macdoel area of northern California.

The property has anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 strawberry plants per acre growing on it. That means at the end of the growing season, there are nearly 240 million plants harvested from the fields.

No strawberries, just plants.

"There is no fruit production that happens at this nursery," said Scott Scholer, Macdoel ranch manager at Lassen Canyon Nursery.

The production begins in April when about 110 employees take to the fields to start planting. "We start with root stock which we grow in Mantica, California," Scholer said.    

Each day the employees work their way through the 740 acres dangling in a sling from, what resembles, the wings of an airplane attached to a tractor- stretched out over rows of strawberries. "Picking with the tractor is easier because we can control the speed across the field, also no one is walking on the plants," Scholer said.

"We spend all summer long picking off blooms and runners from the plants," he said. "We want our plants to runner, not bloom. We go back through and get weeds and pick runners. That's what we sell is the runner plants." 

"It's the offshoot of the plant we put into the ground. we throw the original starter plant away when the season is done." Scholer said.

"By the end of the growing season, these fields will look like your lawn," Scholer said.

"During the heat of the summer we water once or twice a day for three to four hours. " he said. "People will drive by and not be able to tell that they are strawberry plants because they are so full and green."

In October, the plants are then uprooted and shipped to one of three trimming sheds located either in Redding, Yuba City or Mantica.

"We ship to our trim sheds in a four foot by four foot box," he said. "They are then cleaned up and put into boxes of between 1,000 and 1,500 plants." the plant then go to commercial growers in Southern and central California.

For more than 50 years, Lassen Canyon Nursery has grown strawberry plants and shipped them across the country for farmers to plant and harvest their berries.

Since the early '80s, Lassen's has been in the Macdoel area producing strawberry plants for shipment.

"There was a group that planted strawberries in the 1950s, then another that planted some crops in the late '70s.

The current business was started in 1982." Scholer, said.

Although the current business is thriving, they have no plans for expansion.

"Right now we have ample land and aren't looking for any more." said Scholer.

In what started out as alfalfa fields, strawberry plants are the main focus for Lassen Canyon Nursery, but the field across the highway has taken a different route to the trimming shed.

The Prather Ranch, also located in Macdoel, started out just producing organic beef and alfalfa. But, after seeing Lassen's strawberry plant production thriving, decided that maybe organic strawberries might do well.

"I dreamed about it for a long time, " said James Rickert at Prather Ranch farms. "Nobody's trying it so I thought, what the heck."

The process for growing non-organic strawberry plants is essentially the same for growing organic ones. "The difference is that we only use organic fertilizer on our crop," Rickert said.

Without pesticide, their crop yields are slightly smaller, yielding only about 2 million plants on the six acres the Prather Ranch has allocated for the strawberry crop.

Those six acres are a perfect size for Richert. "I don't see us growing much more," he said.

The organic plants are then shipped to Redding, one of the same trimming sheds that Lassen Canyon Nursery sends its plants for trimming and distribution, with a large portion of the plants going to Watsonville.

Though both companies grow strawberries, there is no competition between them.

Lassen's helped us start our strawberry fields and we wouldn't have been able to do it without them.

 

(Permission to post from the publisher.)