Everbearing strawberries.

Fruit across a long window rather than a single flush

Everbearing strawberry flowers and fruits repeatedly rather than in one short burst, which is what lets a glasshouse crop supply a market continuously instead of for a few weeks. It is the basis of the Dutch fresh crop under glass, and the extended picking window is the commercial reason to grow it under protection at all.

What the crop needs

The crop is grown on suspended substrate gutters at working height, with drip irrigation and drain recirculation. The root zone is small relative to the fruit load, so water and salt management do most of the work of holding quality, and the crop is sensitive to interruptions while fruit is filling. Picking at height is what keeps the labour sustainable across a long season.

What the greenhouse has to do

Strawberry under glass is grown on suspended gutters, and that choice runs through the whole building. Picking happens at waist height instead of ground level, which changes the labour plan more than any other decision on the crop; the gutters have to be hung from the structure, so the load path is designed in from the start rather than added to a finished house.

A long picking window is what the house is paid for. Quality has to hold from the first flush to the last, which puts the weight on climate stability rather than on peak performance — screening and heating that keep the plant productive through the shoulders of the season, ventilation that keeps the canopy dry, and irrigation with the buffer to carry a fruiting crop through hot weeks.

DutchGreenhouses® specifies the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the strawberry crop, its picking window and the local climate, so quality holds across the whole period rather than the first flush. Get in touch to plan a strawberry greenhouse.