STRAWBERRIES THRIVE IN CAMERON HIGHLANDS
Cold weather allows fruit to be cultivated all year round as B. SURESH RAM finds out
WHAT is heartshaped, bright red, juicy, has seeds on the outside, and usually taken fresh with cream, ice cream as well as made into jam? Strawberries.
It is a runner plant which thrives in temperate countries rather than tropical ones like Malaysia’s.
Nevertheless, it is grown at one location in the country — Cameron Highlands, where strawberry farms display huge signs that scream out “Come pick your own strawberries”, as well as the fruit, albeit an artificial and inflated one, greeting visitors.
Despite being notoriously fickle and tough to grow if the right conditions are not met, farms here are doing their best to attract and bring in visitors, and make some profit in a competitive market. Cameron Highlands has some 10 strawberry farms, with most of them located in Tanah Rata, Brinchang and Kea Farm, which are nestled at elevations between 800m and 1,600m.
Bobby Joshua Kodimani runs one such farm — Kasimanis 1973 Strawberry Farm in Tanah Rata — with his cousin, Reuben James Raju.
According to him, strawberry plants are notoriously sensitive when it comes to their growth cycle as well as fruit yield, and the interaction with people affects this.
“We do not have a choice but to allow tourists to pick their own fruits. Other strawberry farms are doing it. If we turn the tourists away, we would end up losing income. They (the tourists) could just go elsewhere,” he told the New Sunday Times in an interview recently. Forty six years later, even the method of cultivating the strawberries has changed.
Bobby said the farm went from cultivating strawberries which are plant runners on soil beds in the 70s, to the plasticulture method, and the current hydrophonic method via individual pots.
“The pots enable us to pay specific attention to each plant and its needs,” he says, adding that it will also enable them to isolate any plants with disease or pest problems.
He adds that this includes the strawberry’s biggest threat — mites and as such they are quite careful in the initial stages of cultivating the fruit.
In the first three to five weeks, the young plants are watered and fertilised at regular intervals. We also use a bit of pesticide. He adds that the weather is also essential for the strawberry plants cultivated on a 1.5ha plot.
“Strawberry plants need an abundance of sunlight and water especially in the first three months of growth and we use fertilisers at regular intervals to aid its growth,” said Bobby.
He adds that each pot would provide a good yield of fruits in the first two years and subsequently it is dependent on how each plant is managed.
Bobby said they usually harvest strawberries on alternate days to increase fruit yields.
“The cold climate makes it suitable for cultivating strawberries all year round throughout the highlands,” he said, adding that if one tried planting strawberries in the lowlands of Malaysia, the yield would see smaller-sized fruits, which may not be as tasty as that grown in the highlands.
On why he took up farming, the computer science graduate says he does not mind doing it despite his qualification, because it was a family business, which is now into the third generation.
Bobby adds that his cousin Reuben James Raju is an architect by training, and they are following in the footsteps of their late grandfather Kasimani Palliah, fathers and uncles who managed the farm earlier.
Reuben adds that their late grandfather was a jack of all trades and a handyman. He had decided to plant strawberries as an experiment, and eventually was among the first to plant the fruit in the highlands.
“The farm began in 1973 but he (Kasimani) began experimenting with the fruit on a small scale, way before that,” said Reuben.
The popularity of the strawberries has seen a boom over the last four decades and also spawned cottage industries that produce jams, dried fruits, souvenirs, pillows, clothing, keychains, toys and other merchandise carrying the shape and theme of strawberries. And last but not least the nasi lemak sambal strawberry which is gaining traction.
The strawberry in Cameron Highlands has indeed come a long way — from a mere fruit to an attraction in its own right.