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It's harvest time for Basin strawberry plants
MACDOEL - Not all strawberry fields are forever.
It's a process that happens mostly at night.
Fields are lit by portable lights. An armada of
speciality equipment is used to uproot and collect
the plants, which are packed in refrigerated
trucks, then shipped south and replanted.
It's part of a process that makes fresh
strawberries available at grocery stores on a
nearly year-round basis. The plants being uprooted
were put in the ground as root stock in early
April. By late November or early December, the
relocated strawberries will be producing fruit.
Lassen Canyon owns and leases thousands of acres
in Butte Valley and other areas of the Klamath
Basin, and the Shastina, McArthur and Manteca
areas of northern California. Elwood oversees a
team of 1,100 workers that moves from higher to
lower elevation fields uprooting and shipping
strawberry plants September through January.
The job sometimes runs seven days a week,
depending on orders from strawberry growers in
sunnier, warmer areas of California. Crews work 10
to 12 hours a day, usually collecting plants from
25 acres daily. Elwood said the process involves
shipping up to 30 truckloads a day, or about 13
million plants. To keep work operating smoothly,
the staff includes four full-time mechanics.
Elwood said digging begins at night because ,Itkeepstheplantsfrombeinginasmuchofashock.BR>
Bins, which weigh about 750 pounds when filled,
are slid onto cleared fields and retrieved by
loaders that drive them to the refrigerated
Under the rotation plan, fields that grew
strawberry plants this year will be planted with
soil rejuvenating rye for two years before being
replanted with strawberries in 2007.
Elwood says the explosion of strawberry varieties,
combined with the ability to produce on a near
year-round basis and the fruit's acknowledged
health benefits, have significantly improved the
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