Is it the same as National Strawberry Month?

No. National Strawberry Month falls in May and follows the California season, while the Florida observance runs through February; National Strawberry Day is a separate one-day observance on 27 February.

Who started Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month?

The Florida Strawberry Growers Association promotes it, and its earliest surviving announcement of the month is dated 2 February 2012. No founder is named in the sources opened, and the trail begins with a listing in Chase's Calendar of Events for 2004.

Is it the same as the Florida Strawberry Festival?

No. The festival is an eleven-day event in Plant City: it ran from 26 February to 8 March in 2026, and in 2027 it runs from 4 to 14 March.

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month

Next celebratedMonday, February 1, 2027

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month celebrates the berries Florida picks while the rest of the country is still in winter. Buy them by the flat, eat them fresh, and save a few for shortcake.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEAll of February

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYFruit

ORIGIN

Institutional Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2004

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

In print by 2004, in the growers' name by 2012.

The earliest located record of the month is a listing in the 2004 edition of Chase's Calendar of Events, which recurs in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 editions; no founder, founding year or establishing document was located in the indexes searched. The Florida Strawberry Growers Association has promoted the month in its own name since a press release dated 2 February 2012, but no source opened states that the association created it.

Read the 2012 announcementvia floridastrawberry.org

INTRO

Florida's biggest fruit money comes from a berry

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month gives all of February to a fruit that outearns Florida's citrus. USDA's Economic Research Service reports that strawberries accounted for 56 percent of the state's fruit and nut cash receipts in 2024. That is more than Florida oranges, grapefruit and tangerines brought in together.

Florida ships strawberries from November to April, and USDA's 2025 outlook says those shipments typically peak in February. California grows about 90 percent of the national crop. It ships almost 90 percent of its own volume between April and October.

The month itself is not heritage, and the association's own announcement does not present it as such. It is a promotion, run by the people who grow and sell the crop.

ORIGINS

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month history

INTRODUCTION

Plant City had a strawberry harvest worth celebrating long before anyone gave it a month. In 1930, members of the newly organised Plant City Lions Club conceived an event around the local crop, and the Florida Strawberry Festival dates its heritage to that year. The festival went dark for six years around the Second World War, and American Legion Post #26 is credited with reactivating it in 1948.

CHAPTER 01

The growers organise

Growers began meeting in each other's homes in 1980. On 11 February 1982 they founded the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, based in Dover and Plant City, which now represents 70 farm families.

The association's work is specific and unglamorous. Growers pay a voluntary assessment of $50 for every acre of strawberries they plant. Together they set out more than 250 million plants a year.

CHAPTER 02

A crop with patents on it

Since 1992 the University of Florida's breeding programme at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm has released patented Florida varieties. Sweet Charlie, Florida Radiance, Winter Dawn and Sweet Sensation are among them, and a sister company collects the royalties.

CHAPTER 03

A month older than the growers' claim on it

The month itself is where the record thins. The phrase appears in four consecutive editions of Chase's Calendar of Events, 2004 through 2007, and in no earlier edition indexed.

That absence was measured, not assumed. A search of the same annual for New Year's Day returns 57 volumes reaching back to 1958, so the index does hold the older books.

HathiTrust holds no Chase's volume after 2007, which is a limit of the index rather than an end of the listing. No source opened names a founder.

The association put its own name to the month in a press release dated 2 February 2012. By February 2015 it was packing hot pink tins of berries off to television weathercasters, from Chicago to Miami and Milwaukee to Charlotte, in the markets that buy the winter crop.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A Lions Club starts a festival

The Florida Strawberry Festival traces its first year to an event of the Plant City Lions Club.

Growers form an association

The Florida Strawberry Growers Association is founded on 11 February.

Florida starts breeding its own

The University of Florida programme at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center begins releasing patented varieties.

Chase's Calendar lists the month

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month appears in Chase's Calendar of Events, the earliest record located.

The association announces it

A press release dated 2 February promotes February as Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month in the association's own name.

Berries go to the weathercasters

The association reports a second year of shipping Florida strawberries to television weathercasters to promote the month.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month

MARKET

The target markets named in 2012: the states east of the Mississippi.

Florida grows about 10 percent of the country's strawberries and picks them in winter. The association's 2012 announcement named states east of the Mississippi as the target markets for that crop.

WEATHER

The freeze reached into the month

Two winter storms hit Florida specialty crops in the 2025/26 season, and USDA reported that Florida strawberries were negatively impacted by the freeze. Weekly shipments rose again in late February but stayed below the previous season's level through mid-March.

COUNTY

The county puts a number on it

In February 2026 the Hillsborough County commissioners proclaimed Florida Strawberry Festival Days over the run of the festival. The county's own announcement valued its strawberry industry at $1.1 billion.

BY THE NUMBERS

Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month by the Numbers

~two-thirds: Florida volume shipped in February and March
~75%: Florida strawberry acreage in Hillsborough County
10,062: Florida average harvested acres, 2010-2022
38,366: California average harvested acres, 2010-2022
$145.85: Florida price per hundredweight, 2010-2022 (California $91.68)

We're celebrating February as Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month to call special attention to winter strawberries.

Sue HarrellDirector of marketing, Florida Strawberry Growers Association

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month

One Florida county has a legal strawberry holiday

Section 683.12 of the Florida Statutes makes Parade Day of the Hillsborough County Fair and Plant City Strawberry Festival a legal holiday within that county, on which city and county offices and banking institutions may remain closed. It was enacted by chapter 73-160, Laws of Florida, in 1973.

The festival runs its own post office

The Florida Strawberry Festival operates a post office during its run, staffed by the U.S. Postal Service. Its hand stamp reads "Florida Strawberry Festival Station, Plant City, Florida 33563."

The cultivated strawberry carries eight sets of chromosomes

Fragaria x ananassa is an octoploid, formed when two wild octoploid species hybridised. Those two descend from four diploid progenitors merged into a single nucleus more than a million years ago.

English has called it a strawberry since before 1150

The Oxford English Dictionary records the compound of straw and berry with its earliest known use in the Old English period. The entry lists ten senses of the noun and has not yet been fully revised.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month

Buy the winter crop while it is here

Check the label or ask the produce manager where the berries in front of you were grown. Look at the fruit rather than the packaging, and buy the box you would happily eat over the sink.

VISIT

Visit the festival in Plant City

The Florida Strawberry Festival straddles the end of February and the start of March. Check its dates before you book, because the run moves each year.

RUN

Run a taste test with friends

The growers' association has staged its own, with the Central Florida Chapter of the American Culinary Federation and with visitors at the Florida State Fair. Set out two or three varieties, hide the labels and see which one the table picks.

SERVE

Serve the berries raw

Fresh fruit is the point of a winter harvest, so pick a recipe that does not cook it. Shortcake, a tart or a bowl with cream all leave the berry doing the work.

POST

Post a card from the festival

Take a card or two with you to Plant City and mail them at the festival's own post office rather than from home. Write them before you set off, and post them on a day the festival is open.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month?

1 / 8

The earliest located listing of Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month appears in which annual reference book?

Answer

No. It is not a public holiday: Florida's chapter of legal holidays and special observances designates several months without naming a strawberry one, and no governor's proclamation for it was located.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

15sources

14primary records

11independently dated

Primary records

USDA Economic Research Service2026-03

Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook, FTS-384

Florida's cash receipts, its shipping window and the 2025/26 freeze events.