Jordbær season ending early after record June heat

Denmark’s commercial strawberry season is closing weeks ahead of schedule after June’s record heat shrank harvests and accelerated ripening, growers and advisers say.

Reporting by DR, Denmark’s national broadcaster, said many open-field growers will stop sales within days as early varieties that usually last until August have already been picked. Heat stress during the prolonged hot spell forced berries to ripen too quickly, leaving them smaller and reducing total yields.

“We expected our late varieties to need almost another week before they were ready, but they’re already being harvested,” said Andreas Carstensen, owner of Hellevad Pluk-Selv Jordbær in southern Jutland. He estimates his season will be 10–14 days shorter than usual despite attempts to delay ripening through irrigation.

Dan Haunstrup Christensen, a strawberry adviser at HortiAdvice, said temperatures above 30 °C during the June heatwave speeded up ripening so much that berries did not reach full size and lost quality. “When plants are forced to ripen this fast, the fruit simply doesn’t develop properly,” he said.

Jesper Knudsen, a grower south of Kolding, said his Malwina variety produced about 25 % fewer berries than normal because they remained undersized.

While June’s average temperature tied the record set in 2018, the heat was not uniform across the country. Growers in cooler northern districts may still have berries into August, Christensen noted.