We've been picking the strawberries a couple of times a week since January, to sell out of the store, pre-picked only. But with these couple of weeks of warm weather ahead, we feel confident enough to go ahead and open the field for U-Pick as well! Now for those who want to pick multiple gallons and make jam or jelly, I would still suggest waiting until sometime in April. The busiest times on our farm are event days, & weekends that have a holiday (especially Easter), so for those days, we suggest calling the morning you come to be sure we have some either pre-picked and to be sure the field isn't picked out! We don't take orders ahead of time b/c we have no way to control how many get picked when the field is open for U-Pick so we can't guarantee them ahead of time.
As for our other fruit, we had a pretty good winter as far as chill hours go. If you've read my other posts, you know that fruit has to have a certain amount of chill hours. We've had a pretty good winter for peaches, plums and nectarines so as long as we don'ot have an early bloom and late frost then we are hoping to have a good peach and plum season this summer! We did have had a few plum trees that bloomed early, before several frosts and even the freeze that we had so we are expecting to lose some of those or have damage. Thankfully it was a variety that we only have a handful of trees so the rest of the crop hasn't bloomed yet!
Aren't you guys growing apples?? We hear that question alot and turns out I jumped the gun and printed in several places that we were growing apples. We are, and they make the biggest most plentiful pretty green apples you've ever seen and then the minute they start to riped they get a big brown spot on them and they ruin. Our season is a little wonky as well b/c one year they came in in July and one year late august. Until we get the kinks worked out of our apple growing, we won't have any available. Believe me if we figure out what's going on with them I will be shouting it from the rooftops to come pick your own apples in south Georgia! The varieties that we planted are supposed to grow in our region but we haven't been able to successfully pick any ripe ones yet. They make like crazy but still have a problem so stay tuned and I will definitely update when we are able to pick some successfully!
