It is barely believable 25 years have passed since my business partner Kirby Wang and I discussed starting a joint venture in fruit growing and processing over a few beers in Qingdao. That was in 1999 and here we are in 2024 celebrating 25 years of Dragons Garden Ltd.
From humble beginnings with a leased 9-acre fruit nursery we have grown steadily and surely to a substantial organic strawberry farming operation and a very flexible fruit processing operation, with 120 staff turning 5000 MT of fruit into various value-added products. Through all this the leadership and vision of Kirby, together with our strong core of experienced staff, have risen to every challenge. Along the way we have welcomed many valued customers from across the globe to visit us. That human contact and the shared endeavour of creating a business and building a bridge between cultures continues to be our motivation and pleasure. That and “Kaizen” the Japanese term that roughly translates as “continuous improvement”. Cheers! 🍻
To celebrate this marker in our development we would like to take our readers through some of the important periods and activities of the calendar year with a glimpse into what goes on in the fields and factory as the year progresses.
As we come out of winter our strawberry plants are emerging from dormancy, as can be seen in this photograph taken on our Marlborough block a few days ago.
Our farms on the Shandong Peninsula are at Latitude 36 North. Following that Latitude line around the world you pass over Watsonville, California (the leading strawberry area in the USA) and Seville, Spain (the leading strawberry growing area in Europe). Neither of those areas has to contend with a short sharp winter, as does the Shandong Peninsula. Our strawberries are grown on the white plastic mulch seen in the picture but are also covered by a clear plastic film that insulates the plants against biting winds and warms the soil as Spring arrives. Soon the strawberries need to be freed from that tiny plastic polytunnel to continue their growth in the fresh air. This year the winter has been relatively mild and wet, with even some snow, quite a rare occurrence for dry Shandong.
The strawberry plants look full of vigour although it is too early to make projections on the crop. The risk of frost damage to the flowers will persist until about mid-April.
We will be back in touch with developments we hope will be of interest in the months to come.