sky news - Strawberries are important ?

The massive Egyptian ones thru the winter months were nice, you could eat em like an apple. As a kid they were always sprinkled with a little sugar in our house, so they must have been rather tart without.

Didnt realise Israel, Morocco and Egypt were in the EU

The story is we won't have cheaper UK strawberries because  -wait for it-  we will have no Poles to pick them. They will all rot in the ground apparently. Sounds a poor business model to me, who used to pick them?

i love them

The ones from my garden taste very different from the ones you buy in the shops.

The ones in the shops are hard and as zorro says taste of nuthin

I love a picking strawberries thread. So easy to pun-it.

The local Tesco Express do a big punnet for £3, I get a couple every week and they are very tasty.

Shop bought strawberries are so improved over what they used to be that I no longer bother to grow my own.They are a lot of trouble as they need regular watering weeding and protection from slugs, birds and mice. I do however continue to grow raspberries, gooseberries and currants.

@saddo -- The story is we won't have cheaper UK strawberries because  -wait for it-  we will have no Poles to pick them. They will all rot in the ground apparently. Sounds a poor business model to me, who used to pick them?

The Brits who used to do it no longer need the money. South Londoners used to "holiday" by picking fruit in Kent are now on benefits. Students used to use it for picking up cash in the summer but they now take out huge student loans or take internships.

The problem for the Romanian or Polish pickers is that the fall in sterling means that what was an attractive wage in their own currency now isn't.

they have nice looking strawberries, so what? they need to taste good.
What's wrong with fruit growers, all it's about is money.
You might as well eat a synthetic strawberry cone.
There is no strawberry flavoured strawberries in the supermarkets.
Morrison, tesco, sainsbury - all the same.

It must be the varieties they grow? the all year availability?

when is strawberry season?, what variety is best. everything else is boring
strawberries, even if you get huge ones? are strawberries meant to be that big.
must be sprayed to get that big.

Style over substance again - what's wrong with people.
It's getting so, you think you are living in a cardboard world.

Could it be that many people are so addicted to greater and greater amounts of sugar that they can no longer detect the sweetness of fruit?

it's mass production.
If you can go to a fruit market and test a strawberry and get incredible ones over pap in the supermarkets?
trouble with these punnets in supermarkets is they are sealed, no way of knowing you are being sold a pup.

The fruit market is 20 miles away so it's not convenient?

Supermarkets have us captured.

I used to grow my own strawberries. They were sweeter than the ones in the shops. Now there is virtually no difference. Whether it's due to better varieties (Elsanta, Eve and others) or growing under plastic canopies or more efficient food chain allowing them to be picked when fully ripe, I don't know, probably a combination of all these things. If you want to eat them at their best do not serve straight from the fridge but allow several hours at room temperature for the subtle aromas and sweetness to fully develop.

See what I did.......

That will show the strawberry eating, wimbledon watching Leavers the very real and severe effect of regaining our sovereignty.

Next thing they will be telling us is that the cost getting yer nails done in a nail bar will go up because the Chinese have all gone home.  Oh hang, on, they are not in the EU, so how did they all get here?

who used to pick them?

Teens and Gypsys mostly. I did it one summer at Tiptree where the jam comes from when I was 15. Back breaking work, because the plants are so close to the ground.

As always, the problem isn't a shortage of workers. It's a shortage of cheap workers.

They make the best jam out of small (about the size of a raspberry) berries and they were very tasty compared to the bigger strawberries that went to the supermarkets. You can probably buy the small berries locally to Tiptree.

Much fruit and veg are tasteless now. Any old farts remember biting into a radish or spring onion as a kid? Q.E.D.

I watch with amazement at these Bosses who complain about not being able to get " English " workers to pick fruit. If it is such a great job why don't they do it themselves and get their families to do it? Why would an English person with a family want to move to direst Lincolnshire for two or three months of a year to live in a hut for minimum wages while their families rent had to be paid back home?

The business model is wrong. These people not only just exploit foreign workers they drive down the wages of UK workers. The hotels and restaurants are complaining they won't be able to get staff! Well guess what surely the Capitalist Model suggest's you pay more in wages to attract workers?

These owners and companies are dealing from a stacked deck. Enough is enough!

zorro'

Marshmellow


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@pxb -- Back breaking work, because the plants are so close to the ground.

Yes -- part of the solution might be to grow soft fruit at waist-height. A sophisticated version of flowerpots on tables, as it were.

^ they do that now Ram'

Or grow potatoes or cereals, or any other crop which gets harvested mechanically.

Leave soft fruits to be grown in the countries where cheap labour is actually available, and access the crop the old-fashioned way - by trade. Surely more efficient for the consumer than having to pay to fly workers over, and then, whether or not you actually want to buy strawberries, having to subsidize their labour with tax credits, housing benefit and free health care on the NHS.

Absolutely, screaming, and food imported from the third world will be cheaper once we have left the protectionist EU. A win-win for us and the poor farmers in third world countries.

If paying living wages means your business won't make money, it's not really a business is it.

go to your local farm - good ones there

Fresh is best but I buy a lot of frozen fruit these days mostly Raspberry blackberry blueberry pineapple and strawberry.  Suck em frozen on a hot day, nice.

what is essential, I don't think I ever went to the shops for strawberries?
If they weren't there, I wouldn't even notice them being gone.
grapes knock them out of the park.
It's like christmas turkey? it's a fad.

the beetles have eaten all mine this year  - buggers

waste of time that was  -  would have had more success growing coconuts

What has "essential" got to do with it?
Should we all have to live on cabbages and potatoes? Wear sack cloth and ashes?
Most people like strawberries and buy them as a treat. Much better to do that than eat cake, chocolate or stodgy puddings.

they're not a treat if they are without taste.
as the saying goes.. what use is salt if it loses it's taste.

I don't see anyone wearing sack cloth and ashes. Stop reading the bible,
it's beneath you.

I do buy potatoes, but usually to make chips? or fondant potatoes.
Cabbage is extremely healthy for you, said to cure stomach ailments, ulcers etc.

I'm saying it's a perceptual treat? i think chocolate sells better if you
are thinking of treating someone. Nobody gives Strawberries at xmas.

A strawberry is a poor man's raspberry.

(Confucius)

It's just your opinion that they are without taste. Were that so then nobody would buy them yet the supermarkets are full of them. Supermarkets don't stock food if nobody buys it.
How do you explain that?

Carry on eating sweet fatty treats zorro but don't then wonder why you are overweight.

Perishable goods like strawberries are in and out the door within days. Stock flow is monitored closely and ordering matches demand. Huge quantities are eaten every year.

One thing I've noticed with out of season strawberries, is that they keep much longer than the ones I pick from my own garden when they're in season.

Why is that?

Cos they are in a tin?