This month we will be sharing with you some facts around our Kent operation, where we produce a large part of our British strawberry crop. We are now at the height of the season and our super picking teams are doing a fantastic job.
In total, we will grow around 4000 tonnes of British strawberries and 200 tonnes of British raspberries this year. If you buy one of our punnets of soft fruit it is quite likely that it will have been freshly picked from Kent (don't forget to look for the John Davies name to know they are ours). Our fruit is grown under a combination of 50 acres of glasshouses and 80 acres of polytunnels. Our state of the art glasshouses enable us to extend the growing season to nine months of the year. So you can look forward to eating British strawberries on Christmas Day!
Growing strawberries, of course, demands heat and so renewable energy is extremely important to us. We make full use of a combined heat and power plant, which heats our state of the art glasshouses as well as feeding back into the national grid. We don't stop there, any emissions from this are turned into Carbon Dioxide and fed to our plants which promotes healthy growth, thanks to improved levels of photosynthesis. This facility always creates lots of interest from our visitors, but we are keen to do more and develop this further, with a biomass boiler which will provide even more renewable heat.
Our farm is set near to the Kentish marshlands which provide a rich habitat for local wildlife and of course birds. We are keen to preserve this area and over the last 12 years, we have been working closely with the local RSPB who visit regularly to carry out bird monitoring, ringing and recording.
Wherever you are we hope you are enjoying British Strawberries and will continue to do so all summer long.