The cold nights aren't making the job easy for farmers.

CHATHAM -- The cool start to summer has delayed people from hitting the beach and also from picking strawberries from the berry patch.  Typically the season starts at the end of June, but this year, strawberries aren't expected until after July 4.

And strawberries aren't the only crop struggling to grow.

"Our growing season has been very cool, so that makes it quite challenging.  I'm going to say we're probably about 10 days behind schedule.  Generally we're starting to look really hard at harvesting our alfalfa and we're not even close to that yet," said Paul Naasz, the manager of the U.P Experimental Farm in Chatham.

So what conditions are good to help strawberry plants early on?

"Warm sunshine.  Rain early on is not bad, but we don't really want a bunch of rain while the berries are starting to turn red at all," said Peter Maki, the owner of Ostanek's Strawberries in Trenary.

And the cold nights aren't making the job easier for farmers.

On nights when frost is possible, farmers use irrigation systems to keep their crops from freezing.

Luckily, the late start to the season won't have too much of an impact on the berries.

"The cool weather, it could stunt the plants a little bit.  You know you like like that warm weather early in the spring so the plants will grow a little bit before they have to start putting out their blossoms, and a cool year like this, the plants are hardly growing and the blossoms are coming so they'll be shorter plants," Maki said.

Despite the slow start to the season, strawberry prices will not be affected.