I bought a Darrow blueberry bush from Rain Tree Nursery and get quarter sized berries now that it is established.
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hows taste?
We have have 9 different varieties planted over the years starting in 1992 and all taste great. We have lost some tags over the years so i cannot tell you which varieties are the sweetest and which are slightly tart but Darrow is very nice and sweet.The berries were slow and small in the beginning but after several years began to get larger.
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Just a note that blueberry cultivation only began at the start of the last century. I found a very short write-up of a much longer history I read some times ago. Blueberries: A Biography | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine
Basically, a woman who was an only child (that part was important back then) inherited a swamp in New Jersey over a hundred years ago and after tasting a few blueberries that held promise, decided to try to create something better than the ones that grew wild, and hired people to help her find the plants on her land that grew the biggest and best tasting. She contacted the researcher that article mentions and they bred them from there. So the whole category of cultivated blueberries is, historically speaking, still in its infancy. There’s so much more to be discovered. (This is me egging you on to plant those seeds and see what you get.)
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Also: Where to Buy OZblu | Find Us in Stores Across the Globe Costco isn’t on that list but one could ask.
Its rare but some do come pretty close to true to parent. In my experience fruit as you said are more likely to produce wild inferior fruit. Those fruit are more likely to be true to type in appearance and taste. Lets talk about the exceptions like wolf river apple which will reproduce itself true-to-variety from seed. On this thread it’s explained in more detail What Causes an Apple to Be True to Seed? - #3 by hoosierbanana
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Peru is just South of Ecuador. It doesn’t get what we would call a winter.
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Have you compared a mouthful (side by side) with regular blueberries and this OZblue for blueberry flavor and acidity? A decade ago or so, I bought blueberries from Cotsco, and they were uniformly large about the size of a dime/nickel. I plopped in my mouth, and the first ‘strange’ taste was not sour as I was expecting them to be. Howeverm they were beautiful, large, and watery. Once I found out they are genetically created, I wasn’t surprised.
Please post a link showing that OZblue are GMO. I’m not aware of any GMO blueberries.
I purchased two containers of blueberries at Costco a week ago. I am eating from one of the containers this evening from http://www.alpinefresh.com and show US grown. These blueberries are good flavored and reasonably sweet without being watery. I also purchased a pack of organic blueberries from Peru. They are relatively bland and appear to have been too long in storage. They are edible but I would rate them 3 or 4 on a scale of 10 where the U.S. grown berries are about 7 or 8.
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The plum size blueberries I bought at Costco tasted like blueberry - I don’t notice anything strange. I ran back to Costco one day later and they were all gone. I did notice that the blueberries on sale in major stores are getting bigger and command a premium price.
Just my personal experience, for blueberries, if tastes don’t downgrade much, bigger is always better. I have 2 blueberry bushes but I rarely picked them. A half hours work in 90s degree temperature, equivalent to $4 of fruits if buying at Costco for similar (or little better) qualities, is not worth my efforts.
Same with figs, I found the quality of figs at Trader Joe’s has improved significantly this year. They started to sell fully ripened figs from California - I know, as a matter of fact, my figs will never match up with figs from California. Then what’s the point for me to grow them as fruits for consumption? (I totally understand the fun part of gardening)
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You know what they are sprayed with!!!
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There is no way that fully ripe figs are being picked in California and being sold in a different state, it’s just that some fig cultivars that are grown in California, are so much better grown in California that even not fully ripe they are better than fully ripe figs grown in lets say North Carolina are, although one of the main reasons for lower fig quality in the USA outside of the most ideal parts of California is the weather. It’s surprising how much even the slightest change in weather can effect the change in fig quality, here in North Carolina the figs range from exceptional, to I deeply regret eating that. Some fig cultivars vary less than others during changes of weather as well, I am still trying to figure out which ones vary the least.
To me fresh figs are way to expensive to buy no matter how good they are, unless it’s an occasional treat. Like one year when I was visiting Manhattan a fruit and vegetable stand that I checked out had fresh figs imported from California, they were better than a lot of the figs that I have picked off of our own trees, rich and wonderful taste, yet they were not fully ripe.
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The figs I bought at Trader Joe’s this year, to my surprise, were fully ripe. They were relatively expensive but not outrageous at all. Considering I am in a borderline zone to grow figs in ground, and most of my figs are in pots, it’s more economically to buy figs from Trader Joe’s, in addition to the much better taste of figs from California.
If I can reliably grow figs in ground, then it’s a very different story.
What zone are you. I get figs off my in ground trees here in zone 6 Cincinnati. Squirrels don’t know what they are.
I would put my figs against any sold and blow them away. Not even close. And I grow in containers. You can’t buy the premium figs I grow. Crap Smith alone will be way better let alone the Col de Dame types which are just amazing. I’m so spoiled and commercial types are such simple flavored boring figs. No mission fig can be anywhere near as good as the exotic figs one can obtain from home growers. Sure it would be great to grow these in California. But I’m very happy with what I can grow in Michigan as they still blow away the boring commercial types.
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I would do the same. I grow in containers too.
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Have you ever tried fully ripen figs from California before? When I lived in California about 10 years ago, fully ripen figs were not even commercially available there. Fortunately someone let me pick fruits freely from a giant fig tree (yes, it’s a real 15 feet tree in ground, not a multi stem bush, not a poor fig stuck in a 5 or 10 gallon pot).
The figs I bought at Trader Joe’s this year tasted better than the figs from that giant tree in California.
I think it’s a new trend. I as a fruit enthusiast certainly welcome this trend - I saw some Californian figs in my Costco recently. They looked ripe to me. But strangely Costco figs were about 50% more expensive than those from Trader Joe’s.
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I’ve never bought figs worth eating from a grocery store here before. That’s why I planted one.
I guess I’ll try a batch from Trader Joe’s soon. But they are really expensive here in VA, and my fig tree produces a hundred plus each year for very little care.
It’s about $3.99 a box, about 1 lbs. Yes it’s expensive but not that expensive to me because a potted fig tree only gives me 2-3 lbs of figs but I have to water it daily (almost) and you know how much work of caring it especially the space of wintering it.
If I live in VA or NC or even MD, I would love to grow many figs in ground. But I still believe California figs taste better.
I agree with you, except that in some climates like mine the figs no matter how good they can be, they can drop lower quality than the figs imported from California fast merely because of the weather, that is one downfall to where I live, yet in the north east I have never heard of that happening to people.
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