Alpine strawberries are extremely fragile. Some say they have the same post harvest needs as raspberries. The fruit is soft and the shelf life is short. The image below was taken of fruit harvested in June 2015. Bottom center you can see a berry that is not ripe. A few are scarlet red while many are not quite fully ripe. For commercial purposes the berries in this image would not be considered top quality. They all should be scarlet red and fully ripe.
Anyone who plans to grow this crop to sell the fruit needs to consider protection. From experience I can tell you that the rain and wind can cause significant damage. The plants get tangled and the fruit gets bruised. Very shortly after the bruising disease can set in. At the very least it is advisable to apply a preventative fungicide treatment.
Better yet, provide protection. It is not necessary to grow them in a greenhouse but a low tunnel or high tunnel can help avoid the damage, loss and quality issues that result from severe weather.
When I grew fraises des bois commercially I did not have protection so I’m speaking from experience. The only thing I could do at the time was harvest before the storm. It usually was a mad dash to get as much fruit under cover as possible. This usually meant that the fruit was harvested during the day when it was hot and had to be held for delivery the next day. Most often the fruit harvested this way was of inferior quality.
All of this could have been avoided with a simple low tunnel. When I was growing fruit commercially nearly 30 years ago there were few if any tools to use for bending pipes or wire. It was simply not as widely available as it is now.
My advice, invest in some form of protection. Your fruit quality will be more consistent, your disease pressure will be lower and you will suffer less loss of fruit during and after severe weather.
