It’s possible you just don’t like them, it could be me totally! It happens. You know any strawberry fully ripe tastes pretty damn good to me compared to those tasteless giants at the grocery store. I’m hoping Archer will give me those huge giants, but actually taste excellent and be aromatic, as they claim, we will see? If anybody ever wants to try anything I have I can save runners.
What I don’t like about MdB is that the fruit here is very tart until it’s fire engine red, and it takes so long, the birds cleaned me out this year. I like that they are very early here. Even beating the honeyberries. So I can’t pick early, my wife hates any tartness in strawberries. Whereas some old cultivars like Mesabi sweeten up fairly fast, even before fully ripe. MdB has a slight alpine taste when fully ripe, and that makes for a very unique flavor. But alpines are stronger, and musk strawberries even more so. I grow all of them.
Have you heard about the Strasberry or Framberry? I’m a sucker for the unusual. I might try this at some point.
I tried the Strazzbery - it tasted like strawberry
It is a strawberry. Another heirloom
The Strasberry or Fragaria × ananassa ‘Mieze Schindler’ is a variety of the garden strawberry, with a raspberry-like appearance, originally developed by the German breeder Otto Schindler in 1925. It is not a hybrid of the two fruits. It is similarly soft textured, with characteristics that are similar to raspberries, such as being a deeper red, being rounder and having a bumpy exterior. They are also smaller than an average garden strawberry and have deeper seeds.
Unlike other garden strawberry varieties ‘Mieze Schindler’ produces no fertile pollen and will need a pollinator.
Despite its extraordinary flavor, the variety was threatened by extinction but plants survived in amateur gardens in the former German Democratic Republic until they were reintroduced as a commercial variety by a Dutch farmer in the twenty-first century. Since 2013 it is marketed under the new trade name Framberry.
We have these strawberries growing wild in Russia. Actually we have two kinds. The first one is growing in the lightly shaded forests, small and very fragrant. The other one which look exactly as in your picture grows in the open fields and often in dry places in the full sun. It is round and sweet, but not so fragrant. Both are good varieties to eat but picking them is a hard work, they are small, you have to stay on the knees an look under the leaves.
I hope to add some next season.
My first season of Seascape Strawberry.
I am very happy with it. Big fruits tasting great.
In Seattle areas.
AC Wendy is going to go. Puny plants, puny very small berries of poor quality, albeit good-tasting.
I think I’ll set runners from Rutgers Scarlet in the next row right into the slots where I take Wendy out. Monoculture here I come!
I had a chance to try one Archer strawberry it was not quite ripe, yet very sweet. The wife is going to like these. I’m harvesting about a quart a day now, usually it’s more, but I re-did my biggest bed.
Are those yellow ones pineberries, or just early picked Archer’s?
The Earliglow and Jewel I planted about two weeks ago are still just sitting there. Only a few plugs out of 50 have shown new growth or leaves. Am I getting a bit too worried at this point? I know they won’t produce this year, but it’d be nice to see something going on there.
Those are yellow alpine strawberries (the small ones). The pink ones are pineberries (red seeds), the reds are various types, no Archer which is a large red strawberry. I only had one and ate it right away 
A few more are forming.
Yeah the yellow alpines are like weeds and are in most of my beds as such. They are very good though. The birds don’t touch them either.
Some more Archer strawberries are ripe. Huge things, taste is good, and should be better once plants mature more. These are berries from the flowers you’re supposed to remove as flowers. I just let them develop. Mostly because I have better things to do then remove flowers.
I’m letting my new ones fruit, too
A few natural albino pineberries next to some flavorfest. The pineberries are very good – and they’re fun to look at with how deeply imbedded the seeds are within the berries-- but the yield per plant isn’t much.
With that cultivar. White D is fairly productive, and berries are bigger. Seeds are not as indented. Also once plants establish, they produce more. I re-did my bed, so I’m not getting very big berries this year as the plants re-establish. .
I have a few of these from Nourse too, I accidentally pulled one out today. I put it back, hope it makes it. I was thinning plants. Come to think of it, I may move this one to a better spot. The runners got away from me last year. This year I’m removing almost all of them. I only have a couple of these Nourse Pineberry plants. Berries seem firmer than White D, but smaller. Productivity may increase next year.
Yeah, I’ve got white D too. I’m not sure I notice much of a difference in taste. Do you?
I think their is a slight difference between cultivars, but hard to tell, almost identical in flavor.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but I like the grocery store berries better than those I’m growing. By grocery store, I don’t mean the cheapest, barely red tasteless ones (which would still hold their own against mine), but the ripe organic ones. Sometimes non-organic too, but it is more hit or miss.
The ones from my yard aren’t unpleasant, just too mild flavored. I like the acid bite from the CA berries. They also have about twice the brix, at least of the ones I tested tonight (12 vs 6 for mine). Even one that wasn’t really ripe was 7 brix. The ones from my yard are much juicier, but to me that isn’t really a feature. I prefer a denser berry which doesn’t easily get runny,
Is it the cultivars they grow in CA that are better, or the growing conditions that make the difference?
I think Cabot may be especially ill-suited for me. I’ve had other varieties in the past and wasn’t thrilled with them (Ozark Beauty and Surecrop), but this is the first time that berries shipped from CA have been so obviously better.
Bob, that is amazing! Your soil? The varieties you have chosen? I wait all winter long for my berries to ripen. Did you ever try mara des Bois strawberries and Caroline raspberries? I will never eat anither store bought berry again. The ate worth a try.