The strawberry harvest has been going since mid-March at Castleton Farm in the North East of Scotland. The first strawberries of the year come from the 5 hectares of polytunnels heated by a biomass boiler, these heated polytunnels also increase the harvest at the end of the season in early December.
The main varieties grown are Solero, Mailling Centenary, and Lusa, but Castleton Farm is also trialling many other varieties one of which is the Limalexia from the Limgroup. “We have been growing it in our tunnels since 2018 as one of the trials,” explains Maciej Kolasinski, grower manager at Castleton Farm.
“This variety has the same vigour as the Elsanta variety, but it is very difficult to get the UK’s retailers to look at new varieties but it’s on the list for a couple of them. The yield from the Limalexia is good and I think it has good potential.”
Maciej works with Stephan Timmerman from Hortinova, they are doing a lot of SAP analysis on the farm and he instructs them on how to feed the Limalexia to get the best out of variety. Castleton has a new field of Limalexia planted in the soil for this year production and we will be planting more soon for the second crop on our tabletops.
“It is looking like it has massive potential, it is slightly later but that works ok for us and our farm profile. Some varieties cannot survive in the occasional harsh winter that we have in Scotland, the plants just die but the Limalexia had no problem surviving the past winter. There had been signs of early frost damage but if you walk into the field now you do not see it. New varieties come with a learning curve you just have to see what works best for them.”