Hey, Strawberry Lovers!
If you’re a big fan of strawberries—and who isn’t?—then you’ll go absolutely crazy about today! After all, it’s National Pick Strawberries Day—a great pastime for friends and families to get together for going strawberry-picking! It’s much more relaxing than say, apple-picking and, while apple-picking brings the taste of autumn, strawberry-picking epitomizes the spring season.
In order to experience the full satisfaction a strawberry can deliver, you’ll have to have picked it yourself. Fruit farms all across the country open their gates this time of year for the general public to come and peruse these perennial plants to pick their prize strawberries. Picking your own strawberries is not only a fun adventure, it’s also a great way to meet and support your local farmers.
A favorite for lots of people, the strawberry certainly has a healthy following. How could it not? It has such a variety of possibilities like jam, pie, toppings for cereal or ice cream, salsa, the list goes on! But instead of telling you about all the ways you can prepare your picked strawberries, let me tell you some interesting, little-known facts about these curious, little wonders of nature:
1.) Strawberries—brace yourself—AREN’T berries! Berries carry seeds on the inside and there are no seeds inside strawberries. And, what most people assume the seeds are—on the outside—are not actually seeds at all, but tiny, whole fruits. Meanwhile, the red, fleshy part isn’t actually a fruit at all, but the receptacle of the strawberry plant!
2.) A Strawberry, by any other name, would taste just as sweet. Interestingly, strawberries have little to do with other berries, but are actually closely related to Roses! That’s right—that matching shade of crimson is no coincidence, it runs in the family.
3.) They’re a “berry” popular fruit (technically called an aggregate accessory fruit)—strawberries have a great number of health benefits such as lowering blood pressure, increasing good cholesterol, promoting heart health, containing a plethora of antioxidants, and more. It’s no wonder people are so crazy about them.
4.) California produces 83% of the strawberries grown in the U.S., weighing in at one billion pounds each year. If you were to line up—berry-to-berry—all the strawberries grown in California from a single year, they could wrap around the equator 15 times! That’s a lot of strawberries.
Find a nice, local farm where you and your family can spend some quality time together picking these interesting fruits off the many strawberry plants. And, as always, thanks for reading.
- John
