Echo blueberry

" Harvest More Blueberries. Echo produces a crop of berries a few weeks before popular early varieties like Earliblue and Northland. It bears a second crop when late-ripening blueberries are in season—and then Echo keeps fruiting until frost"

https://www.gurneys.com/product/blueberry-echo

I hadn’t heard of multi-cropping blueberries before. Does anyone have any experience with this variety or anything similar?

A little more info:

" ‘Echo’s overwintering buds break in the spring, flower and produce a crop like most blueberry plants. ‘Echo’, as with its ‘Perpetua’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 24,209) maternal parent, is unique in that the new growth produces flower buds that proceed to break bud without winter dormancy and then flower and ripen a late-summer into fall crop. While it is not uncommon for blueberry genotypes to produce a few fruit in the fall on 1-2 buds at the tip of the new growth, these repeat flowering genotypes will flower on up to 12-16 nodes on the new growth."

https://patents.justia.com/patent/PP29787

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It looks like the early crop is the small crop. This puts the main crop right up against peak SWD pressure.

From the “Comments”:

Echo produces a small crop of tasty blueberries in the spring, before most other blueberry cultivars, and a larger crop in late summer.

Elsewhere, it said that this produces a crop in the Fall. I’m sure it’s varying by location, but with SWD being an issue here I’d give this a hard pass.

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Sweetheart is the first blueberry I heard about having 2 crops. I could care less about that. How is the taste and firmness? Would be my questions.

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And what is the total crop?

A widely scattered harvest might appeal to the same folks that like ‘ever bearing’ strawberries…but that isn’t a fruit grower…at lest not a commercial or farm market one.

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Yes, I doubt this would appeal to commercial growers. It might be nice for someone that has space for a few bushes… but then why not plant multiple successive ripening varieties in that case?

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Yes that is what I did. I must say it is nice to have blueberries all summer. I enjoy them up to SWD season. Then not so much. My earliest is Pink Popcorn. If you leave till it’s nice and pink they have a mild blueberry flavor. Kinda chewy texture. Very sweet. Probably best for fresh eating only. The more I ate these the more I liked them. The plant is productive. Next up is Spartan also a good one for an early berry. I have 7 others and plan to add two more at a different piece of property. I had a large harvest this year, very nice.

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Drew51> How is the taste and firmness?

BlueBerry> And what is the total crop?

I haven’t grown it, but the paper associated with the patent tries to answer these questions:

The fruit are small (0.8 g; 1.22 ·1.19 cm
height ·diameter) and similar to those of V.
angustifolium (Fig. 5), and they are attractive,
with a subglobose shape that is more elon-
gated than those of ‘Perpetua’. The calyx is
attractive and the fruit has an attractive blue
color (Violet-Blue Group N92C). Fruit are
moderately soft, have a mild flavor, and have
a wet picking scar, thus making them poorly
suited for the commercial fruit market but
fine for the home garden. The second crop
fruit are borne in a loose, determinate raceme
with 6 to 10 berries with acropetal maturation
(Fig. 5). The potential yield of a fully mature
plant is unknown; 3-year-old plants produced
~1.5 kg.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331550932_‘Echo’_Ornamental_Reflowering_Blueberry

I think this is saying that the taste is acceptable but nothing special, and the yield is in line with the other half-high varieties. The main reasons for growing it would be the novelty of having a second crop and the continued production of a small number of berries until the end of the season. I’m tempted.

I never tasted them, but I agree on your assessment of Echo. Sweetheart which i assume you mean was developed by Mark K Ehlenfeldt. He also developed or had helped with Legacy, Pink Lemonade, Cara’s Choice, Hannah’s Choice, and Sweetheart. He also helped release Raz which was developed in 1935 but never released. I think Legacy is awesome, needs time for berries to get sweet. So hard to tell when best. I leave them on at least 3 weeks after turning blue. Cara’s Choice is outstanding and I would put that up against any blueberry. So Mark has released some decent berries. Sweetheart reviews are good, size is medium to medium large, firm and have a good taste from all accounts. I have not seen it rated excellent. Best for 2 crops in mild climates. It is a lot easier to find than Cara’s Choice. I’m not sure why Cara’s has not taken off? It is by far my favorite.
Cara’s does produce a small plant with low yields. But the gourmet berries are more than worth growing. Well Sweetcrisp never took off either, reported to be firm like grapes! So there you go. Mark K Ehlenfeldt has a good reputation. Anything he put out is at least worth a trial. Speaking of good berries I have Ka-Bluey and despite the silly name, I’m liking this one a lot. My state finally approved it to grow here.Productive and flavorful berries. Firm but not super firm.Still a keeper for sure.

New blueberries, like “Cosmic Crisp” apples, put you sort of at the mercy of the people writing the advertisements.
Very few people have tried them, and if they have, one year does not
make a person expert on the plant.
I’ve planted one or two of the ‘everbearing’ blueberries, but have done so at someone else’s place, and have not been back at fruit time to evaluate them.

Drew51 has some good comments on some of the newer releases. Commercial growers, especially those who machine harvest, aren’t going to be planting reblooming or everbearing blueberries. As a fun thing, why not try a couple–blueberries don’t take up a lot of space, you can put them in a flower bed even.

Since I now have SWD fruit flies here, I would not want a fall crop. But a couple of my plants are late types. So I have the season covered, but lose a lot of berries to SWD in late summer. Last year everything was late so the late ripeners were hit super bad with SWD.
As they were a week or two later than normal. It was impossible to save them without spraying a couple times a week. Which I refuse to do.
Yesterday I bought Draper, and Northland to add to a second garden at my cottage. I wanted to add Northland as it is a Northern that was crossed with the wild half highs and produces berries that taste like the wild blueberries of Maine, or are said to anyway. The half highs are not that productive, and I only have room for 2 plants so getting this hybrid will be as close as I get to that wild taste. Northland retains the height and productivity of the northerns. I bought Draper as I like the MSU cultivars and also it is my alma mater. Bred to grow here is always a plus too!