Last year’s hot midsummer and warm and rainy August enabled a rich berry harvest.
A good harvest of wild berries was picked across Finland last year. This is evident from the MARSI study on the volume of sales of wild berries and mushrooms.
Last year’s hot summer-July and sometimes rainy, but hot August contributed to the fact that the berry harvest in Finland was abundant or even very abundant.
Even in Lapland, berries were diligently picked for sale. Picking income in Lapland totaled 5.76 million euros last year. In Lapland, income was mainly collected from blueberries and malts. Lapland also found the most certified organic collection areas, from which the picked berries also have added value for companies.
Blueberry and barley are popular
The blueberry harvest in particular was excellent throughout Finland, although regional variation was large due to the drought of the summer. In Lapland, the harvest was good, and next to Western Finland, blueberries were picked for sale in the region, about three million kilos.
The mulberry, on the other hand, did not really inspire the pickers in Lapland. Although the harvest was in some places better than average, the picking of lingonberries for sale in Lapland was the lowest nationwide, 0.75 million kilos.
Last year’s chestnut harvest was also excellent, and there were no complaints about the quality either. 0.27 million kilos of briquettes were collected for sale in all of Finland. Last year, the share of sales silage collected in Lapland was 72 percent.
– It’s been a strange situation now that there are three consecutive good years of hila. It doesn’t mean that this fourth year is automatically weak, but this is special, and yes, that weak bridge year must come sooner or later.
\”If only spring didn’t come with a rush\”
Although last summer was fruitful in terms of the natural berry harvest, it is not yet possible to make predictions about the upcoming berry summer. According to Peltola, we must first wait for the first observations of flowering to see how many flowers there are.
– In the south, blueberries start to bloom in late May and in the north in early June, depending on the progress of spring. And when we finally see how many raw seeds there are, i.e. how successful the pollination has been, we can already make a few guesses.
Peltola hopes for a steadily progressing spring. The worst option, according to him, is the fast-coming spring, when the buds open and flowering begins, and a possibly surprising back winter can wreak havoc.
– When the flowering is in progress, we hope for cool nights, lots of fluff and good flying winds, so that the pollinators are as active as possible.
*Read more* *News of Lapland**.*