08/06/2026
Strawberry & Berry Season: Surprising Facts About Switzerland's Sweetest Fruit
There's a particular moment in June: you walk past the farm shop and suddenly catch it in the air – the scent of sun-ripened strawberries. Now, when the Swiss fields glow red, the best time of the year begins for everyone who loves berries. Time for a few surprising facts.
Peak season: they taste best right now
Swiss open-field strawberries are at their peak right now. During the main season from mid-May to mid-June, Swiss growers harvest 900 to 1,100 tonnes per week. For the full year, the Swiss Fruit Association expects around 7,500 tonnes – even though the season started back in April with a modest 24 tonnes. The big advantage of local berries: they ripen on the plant and travel only short distances. You can taste the difference.
Botanically, the strawberry isn't a berry at all
It sounds odd, but it's true: botanically, the strawberry is not a berry but an accessory fruit. The juicy red part we eat is the swollen flower base. The actual fruits are the roughly 200 tiny "seeds" on the surface – little nutlets called achenes, each containing one seed. The irony: grapes, tomatoes and even bananas are true berries in botanical terms. The strawberry is not.
Small fruit, big impact
Strawberries are genuine vitamin C powerhouses. With around 59 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, they beat even the orange (about 45 mg) by nearly a third – with far fewer calories (32 instead of 46 kcal). And that's just the start:
- Good for the heart: A long-term study led by Harvard researcher Aedín Cassidy (journal Circulation, 2013) involving more than 93,000 women found that those who ate strawberries or blueberries at least three times a week had up to a 32% lower risk of heart attack. The credit goes to anthocyanins – the plant pigments that give berries their deep red and blue.
- Good for the brain: Another analysis from the Nurses' Health Study (Annals of Neurology, 2012) found that a high berry intake can delay cognitive ageing by up to 2.5 years.
Berry season on your own balcony
The best thing about strawberries: you don't need a garden to grow your own. A sunny balcony is plenty. With a strawberry growing set you can raise your own fruit in a pot or balcony box. And when blueberries and currants come later in summer, a berry picker lets you harvest in a fraction of the time – without squashing a single fruit.
What to look for when buying
You can recognise Swiss strawberries by the origin label and the seasonal logo. Choose fruit with a fresh, green calyx and an even red colour – strawberries don't ripen further after picking. They taste best unchilled and eaten as fresh as possible. So enjoy them while the season lasts.