Here at California Giant, we're in the peak of strawberry season, and we're busy picking fresh, juicy berries every day. These bright red berries are ready to be picked by hand and placed right into the containers you see in store.
We LOVE what we do here at California Giant. Planting, protecting, picking and packing berries year-round brings us so much joy. It’s truly an honor getting berries from our farms to your table. The berry story starts in nurseries where non-GMO plantlets are trimmed by hand, boxed and transported to our growers’ fields each fall for planting. While farmers wait for the annual harvest, plants are protected with hand weeding, special fertilizer, bug vacuums and deer fences. The weather finally warms and we’re ready to meet our berries!
White flowers appear and within 30 days, strawberries are ready to be picked by hand. Look at how cool these photos are! We see the gradient variations of young berries throughout the fields as they grow through their various stages towards ripeness but we've never laid them out to see their true evolution. Our berries transform in such a short amount of time, and we want you to see how berries gradient from white to red as they ripen and become the beautiful berries you see in store.
We move our berries quickly from the field to cooling facilities once they’ve been picked to ensure the freshest and most delicious berries arrive at a retailer near you. Fans pull heat out of the berries and bring their internal temperature down to 32 degrees. From the cooling facilities, our berries can travel for hundreds of miles on refrigerated trucks that have been inspected for cleaniness and monitored to ensure berries are kept at 32 degrees. Refrigeration is the key to keeping berries fresh till you're ready to eat.
Every California Giant berry container has a tracking code and link located on the bottom. You can input the tracking code into the provided link to discover where you berries were grown. Use your tracking code to “follow us to our farm” to trace your berries and enter to win a $100 gift card!
Our favorite and final step in the berry story is you! Our berry story is incomplete without you. From our farms to your table, we thank you for enjoying our strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.
Watch our grower, Jason Morgan, explain more about growing fresh berries.
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