Summerside farm shuts strawberry U-pick after new fungal disease causes crop loss
‘It's a really hard decision,’ says owner of Compton's Farm Market and Berry Patch
A fungus that affects strawberry plants is forcing at least one Prince Edward Island farm to change its operations this summer.
Compton's Farm Market and Berry Patch in Summerside has shut down its strawberry U-pick operations for the season.
Owner Matthew Compton said the reason is neopestalotiopsis, or Neo-P, a fungal pathogen that can cause leaf spots and lead to rotting. There is no known remedy once it hits a crop.
He said the fungus is not present in his normal U-pick field in Indian River, but it has affected a four-acre field in Summerside and caused major yield loss there.
As a result, Compton decided to repurpose the Indian River field — which is normally open to the public — for farm market operations instead.
"It's a really hard decision," he told CBC News. "I really enjoy the public being able to come into our fields with their kids and take their pictures and harvest some strawberries."
'It definitely opened your eyes'
Compton said he first noticed something was wrong last year when the strawberry plants in that Summerside field weren't thriving. An expert from the provincial government later visited and identified the problem as Neo-P.
Compton says his farm needs to produce about 2,400 boxes of strawberries a day to keep its wholesale customers going, and it needs the berries from what would normally be the U-pick field to make that happen.
He said he also had to put in more new strawberry plants than usual.
"It definitely opened your eyes. I mean, it's something I don't want to go through every year," he said.
"We basically had to double our plant production that we were going to plant for this year. So instead of planting, say, 30,000 new strawberry plants, we planted 60,000 plants to make up for this loss."
'I've just been lucky this year'
Other strawberry farmers on the Island share Compton's concerns.
"I've just been lucky this year, but next year it could be a completely different story," said Jennifer VanEwyk, the owner of Shore Breeze Farm in Argyle Shore.
Their strawberry season has been going well this year, but it hasn't been without its struggles. After buying plants from a farm that later tested positive for the fungus, VanEwyk said she thought she might have to deal with affected plants at Shore Breeze.
She had her fields tested twice last year, generating negative results both times, and used a fungicide on her plants this spring.
"So far, so good. I'm not sure if it's the answer; it's just been what I've experienced," she said.
VanEwyk said she'll be keeping a close eye on her crops for the rest of the season, and removing any diseased plants as soon as possible.
'Just don't forget about us'
Compton says Neo-P can last in the soil for a year, so once the strawberries currently in his Summerside field are harvested, he plans to plant something else there.
"We're lucky, we're diverse. We're a very mixed vegetable farm. We grow a lot of other things that will help kind of spread out this loss for us this year, and we'll just move on and smile and away we go," Compton said.
Neo-P does not present any challenges to a strawberry. It doesn't affect its flavour, its taste, its look, or ability for anybody to have it. It's just a plant disease.— Matthew Compton
Although there may be fewer strawberries in this field this year, he said they're still good to eat.
"Neo-P does not present any challenges to a strawberry. It doesn't affect its flavour, its taste, its look, or ability for anybody to have it. It's just a plant disease. It makes the plants not perform... as well."
He added that he hopes researchers and government officials continue looking for a long-term solution to the fungus.
"Just don't forget about us. And let's just not hope this goes away, and come up with a plan to keep it away, and, you know, [be] able to deal with it in the future," he said.
He said he's not aware of any fungicide that can completely eliminate Neo-P, but he noted that a fungicide was recently approved by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency for emergency use to help manage the disease in strawberry fields across a number of provinces, including P.E.I.
He hopes that treatment can help suppress the disease for the field next year.
With files from Gwyneth Egan and Danielle Edwards