Spring Strawberries in Auckland

We’re all familiar with the story; early strawberries have a much higher wholesale price than those picked in the main season.  Auckland and northwards have a natural advantage to the early market.

However, a grower’s strategy to maximize value from strawberry sales will take into account both their local climatic advantage, whether it’s an earlier start to the season up north or a cooler summer on the Kapiti coast which supports better quality late summer fruit. 

The graph below represents last year’s rough Auckland wholesale pricing, starting at high and going down from there, with a substantial bump up just before Christmas.  It’s a pretty typical pattern for wholesale fruit in Auckland, our biggest domestic market.

Since early-to-market is a good strategy for up north, we can analyse the past three year’s variety performance data, focusing on yield, specifically looking at that early period from the start of harvest through 31^st Oct. 

What we notice is some variability in the rankings.  Usually Ventana wins, but not always.

Often Fronteras, Royal Royce and Valiant are in the top performance for early, but again, not always.  Victor doesn’t shine in the early spring, but is a strong yielder in November.

Both the amount of winter chill and the spring weather (rain, warmth) must combine to create this variability. 

Compare that with the whole spring season performance in Auckland, from start of harvest through Christmas.

When the whole spring season is examined, we can still see quite a bit of variability.  Valiant is generally a strong contender.  Ventana and Royal Royce are usually up there for yields, but in the past three years, both of them have had one bad year out of the three.

If it’s important to supply your market for the all-important Christmas week, we can pull that performance out too:

Here at least we have a consistent first place yielder, Victor.  After that we have more variability, but Valiant, Monterey, Fronteras and Camarosa all take turns shining over the last three years.

Of course, this simplistic view doesn’t take into account berry size, which we know is a major weakness of Ventana after the first early harvests.  Another factor is susceptibility to rain cracking, which in a rainy spring can be crucial, and seems to be a strength of the old, dependable Camarosa.

The data highlights how challenging it is for growers to plant their production peaks, given that we are at the mercy of the weather. 

Given the variability by season, it makes sense to hedge bets by growing multiple varieties, like a diversified investment portfolio.  If early is a particularly important target, perhaps a combination of Fronteras, Royal Royce, Valiant and Ventana would be in order.  If you’re not growing under a rain cover, perhaps the insurance of Camarosa’s rain tolerance is important.  If later December is crucial, add Victor to the mix. 

In an ideal world, we’d have data like this for all growing regions in New Zealand.  The variety trials are actually quite an investment, so while we would like to have similar data for Hamilton, we have to make educated guesses.  And above all, have a diversified portfolio of varieties. 

Note: all variety yields reported for 2023 were from plants propagated from the high health unit, because field plants had struggled with cyclone Gabrielle.  2024 and 2025 report averages from all propagators.

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