Hot spell yields bumper crops

Berry producers are preparing for a busy few days as the hot, dry summer yields plentiful boysenberry crops and draws in extra Christmas pickers.

‘‘We’ve probably had one of the best crops we’ve had for the eight years we’ve been here,’’ said Pete Kristofski, the owner of Berrylands, which also produces strawberries and raspberries at the Appleby farm in Tasman.

There were more boysenberries on the vines than he’d seen before, with both strawberries and boysenberries bigger than they’d usually be at this time of year.

‘‘I think we’ve had a very unusual start to summer,’’ Kristofski said. ‘‘It started off early, and the crops have started really early as well.’’

The dry spring had produced a ‘‘good flowering’’, and created ‘‘the perfect environment to basically give us great fruit’’.

‘‘We had a wet spring last year, which didn’t allow the bees to pollinate the flowers fully, so the crop was really lean.’’

A cold, wet summer then saw few people coming out to the paddocks to pick the fruit.

By contrast, visitor numbers so far this summer had been up compared to previous years, helped by the fine weather, Kristofski said.

He anticipated the two days before Christmas ‘‘would be absolutely mental,’’ with people want- ing fresh fruit for Christmas Day.

Tasman Bay Berries, the country’s largest boysenberry farm, was also gearing up for ‘‘a massive weekend.’’

The sunshine had produced berries that were big and sweet, and the vines at the Appleby farm were ‘‘laden with fruit,’’ director Maree Holland said.

There had been none of the adverse weather conditions, like wind and hail, that had damaged the farm’s 46 hectares of crops in the past.

The hot, dry weather had seen visitor numbers for the holiday period up on previous years so far.