Pick Your Own Strawberries at Berrylicious Strawberries | Thirlmere

Strawberry fields forever....or in this case, a delicious ceiling of ruby lookalikes. Berrylicious Strawberries is the only dedicated strawberry farm near Sydney where you pick your own. And we're super excited that their spring strawberry picking season has started. BOOKINGS are ESSENTIAL.

Well this is such a special experience! Aside from learning about where our food comes from and all you can eat strawberries, the hanging strawberry plants are a gorgeous (and delicious) sight! Definitely not what I was expecting when we first headed off to pick our own strawberries at Berrylicious Strawberries back in January 2018.

Berrylicious Strawberries is the only dedicated strawberry picking farm near Sydney. Summer is peak strawberry picking season, but they also have some picking sessions in spring and autumn. BOOKINGS ARE ESSENTIAL.

The Berrylicious Strawberries farm is in Thirlmere, near Picton. It takes us about an hour to get there from Rydalmere. We love making a day of our visit, combining it with lunch in Picton, a wander at The Australian Botanic Garden, cooling off at the awesome water playground at Curry Reserve, visiting NSW Rail Museum (just open on weekends by pre-booking due to covid) or a play at the fab Birriwa Reserve playground at Mt Annan. Scroll down to the bottom of this article for more details on what’s nearby to the farm.

Now unlike most other pick your own farm visits, you can’t just turn up to Berrylicious Strawberries. Bookings are essential.  They announce the pick your own sessions on their Facebook page and you must pre-book online. Now it can be difficult to get a spot (they usually book out in an hour), but the upside is that there’s a limited number of people picking at the same time. This makes it a much more pleasant experience for families and you know there will be strawberries available to pick.

When you arrive, a staff member will explain how things work and show you how to pick the strawberries. You will be given scissors and a shallow tray to collect the strawberries you want to take home. The tray reduces the chance of the strawberries being squashed, like would happen if you collected them in a bag. But you still need to make sure not to pile them up to high within the box.

The strawberries are grown in open sheds, hanging in trays from the ceiling at about 1.5m off the ground. The great thing about this – apart from it looking gorgeous – is that you can pick them rain, hail or shine. But it also means that the ground underneath is muddy from soil and water run off. So gumboots or old shoes you don’t mind getting dirty are a MUST!

It usually takes us about an hour to pick 4kgs, plus eat probably another kilo. And the kids love picking ‘legend’ strawberries and comparing who has found the biggest or reddest ones!