{"id":20934,"date":"2026-04-24T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/20934\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:00:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:00:05","slug":"glorious-weather-sees-uk-grown-strawberries-arrive-in-supermarkets-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/20934\/","title":{"rendered":"Glorious weather sees UK-grown strawberries arrive in supermarkets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UK-grown strawberries are arriving on supermarket shelves after days of bright sunshine and above-average temperatures boosted growth.<\/p>\n

Punnets will begin to arrive on Tesco shelves in Surrey, Kent, Herefordshire and some London stores from Friday, with nearly half the country to follow on next week, the supermarket said.<\/p>\n

The grocer expects to receive 300 tonnes of UK-grown fruit next week \u2013 roughly one million punnets \u2013 up by more than 100% just three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The whole of the UK is set to be supplied by mid-May.<\/p>\n

The news means retailers will have to rely less on Spanish and Moroccan imports in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Picker Punnets will begin to arrive on Tesco shelves in Surrey, Kent, Herefordshire and some London stores from Friday (Tesco\/PA) <\/p>\n

Tesco strawberry buyer Callum Baker said: \u201cThe start of the outdoor British strawberry season is a huge feel-good moment in the year as it means summer is just around the corner with many months ahead of outdoor living.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext week marks a significant step forward in the transition to British supply, with volumes of UK strawberries into Tesco set to increase by more than double since the beginning of April.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the extra sunshine we\u2019ve just had and good weather forecast over the next few days we predict our total UK strawberry volume to be around 40% next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the weather stays relatively good from now then we\u2019ll see UK-wide availability of British-grown strawberries by mid-May.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neil Donaldson, commercial director of growers Hall Hunter, which has farms near Wokingham and Wargrave in Berkshire and Godalming in Surrey, said: \u201cCool nights and warm sunny days create the perfect conditions for growing sweet, full-flavoured strawberries \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what this weekend\u2019s forecast is bringing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to these ideal conditions, we\u2019re expecting a 30% increase in strawberries coming off our farms. It\u2019s a fantastic start to the UK strawberry season, and we\u2019re hopeful these great conditions will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strawberry variety going into Tesco stores is called Lady Emma, known for its large size and sweet flavour, with 400g punnets costing \u00a32.50.<\/p>\n

Bartosz Pinkosz, operations director at The Summer Berry Company, said: \u201cAs we start to transition from our year-round glasshouse crop, our first outdoor strawberries of the season are being picked this week, as the British weather continues to improve.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weather was poor throughout March, which means we\u2019re not expecting a glut of strawberries like we had last year. But that\u2019s actually good news for us all, as it means there won\u2019t be too much fruit all coming at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the brilliant news is we expect the strawberries this year to be particularly sweet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the unsettled weather in March, the fruit has spent more time on the plant \u2013 and the longer the berry is on the plant, the sweeter it gets. That all points to excellent flavour and quality in this year\u2019s strawberries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK-grown strawberries are arriving on supermarket shelves after days of bright sunshine and above-average temperatures boosted growth. Punnets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9676,9674,9677,9675,7996,3187,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-20934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-london-stores","9":"tag-strawberries","10":"tag-strawberry-season","11":"tag-supermarket-shelves","12":"tag-surrey","13":"tag-tesco","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116458633525620550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}