Pick your own with kids: which crops actually work

Picking is one of the few genuinely good cheap days out with children, but the crop matters more than the farm does. Some crops are at toddler height and forgiving; others are three metres up a tree and expensive to damage.

Crops that work with small children

Strawberries. The best first crop by a distance. They grow at knee height, they are obvious when ripe, and a two-year-old can do it. Nothing is fragile enough to break.

Blueberries. Waist height, no thorns, and they go in the mouth as fast as the bucket. Budget accordingly. They are also the most widely grown pick-your-own crop in the country, so there is usually one within reach.

Boysenberries. Trained on wires at adult chest height, which is high for a toddler but easy for a school-age child, and the fruit is unmistakable when ripe. Watch the juice: it stains everything it touches.

Sweetcorn and other vegetables. A short, satisfying pick with nothing fragile involved, and a change from berries in late summer.

Crops that are harder work

Cherries. The fruit is high, the trees are easily damaged, and many orchards now limit numbers or sell timed tickets precisely because of crowd damage. Fine with older children who will listen; hard with a three-year-old.

Apples. Reaching is the problem, and an apple pulled the wrong way takes next season’s fruiting spur with it. Worth teaching properly: cup, lift, twist.

Raspberries and blackberries. Thorns on many varieties. Check before you take small hands into the rows.

Practical things that decide how the day goes

Go early. Rows get picked over and the sun gets serious, and small children fade by eleven on a hot morning.

Take a hat, sunscreen and water for everyone. Picking rows have no shade, and this is the single most common thing people underestimate.

Expect to pay for what gets eaten. Most farms are relaxed about grazing, some charge an entry fee that includes it, and a few ask you not to. Read the sign at the gate rather than assuming.

Bring cash, wear closed shoes, and take a chilly bin for the drive home.

What farms need from you

Most New Zealand farms that stopped offering pick-your-own stopped because of damage, and children in unsupervised groups are a large part of that. Keep them in the rows you are shown, off the ladders unless the farm offers them, and out of the trees.

Several closed listings in this directory say exactly that in their own words. Farms are not being precious: a stripped plant or a torn branch costs them next season.

Booking

Most farms here let you simply turn up, and a few cap numbers or open only on announced days. Where a farm takes bookings we say so on its listing. Either way, check the farm’s own Facebook page the morning you go: on a good weekend in January a small berry farm can be picked out by lunchtime.

Find a farm near you on the map, or see what is ready this month.

Updated 27 August 2026