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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That is odd that costco would be more expensive than trader’s joe for anything. I have had some perfectly ripe figs mailed to me from California. They were not pollinated by the fig wasp and still incredible. In a way they were better than any figs that I have picked from my own trees, yet not way better than the few perfectly ripe figs that I have had from the best in ground cultivars that I have. Within 4 days a perfectly ripe fig should be rotting, so it would be very costly to get such figs from California fast enough, either they’d need to deliver them within 3 days, or send them by refrigerated shipping, either way expensive. That just seems impossible that they could sell them for $3.99 a box after shipping them like that.
You can grow a lot of figs in ground in your zone with proper training and protection. This entails insulation (bags of leaves, etc +rodent control) and a low cordon /step over fig training method where you cut back to the main trunk each winter.
The above thread will help you. @ampersand made a wonderful spreadsheet around the fourth post from the top but I’ve been told some of the best in ground options are Improved Celeste, Florea, Trabia, Hardy Chicago, Salem Dark, and Reservoir.
Figs I bought today at Trader Joe’s. $5.99/2lbs but actually 2 lbs 9 OZ. I think it’s a common black mission fig. It’s so sweet and tastes 10 times better than my own Chicago Hardy.
The local one here had green figs that were rather disappointing. Better than I had bought elsewhere in town before, but I wouldn’t try something that looks identical again.
I’m kind of sad the local Joe’s didn’t have the same kind that you got.
Yeah, they had the 1 lbs boxes of black figs and green figs, both looked unripe to me. I bought the green ones last year and they were not ripe and tasted bland.
The 2 lbs black ones were very good - sometimes they put the boxes on a separate station close to cheeses.
Ok, they got some in today. They are pretty good, so I can understand why you said what you did. I still prefer mine, but I also like my figs closer to overripe than these are.
A chart someone produced, claiming Peru is now the #2 Blueberry producer. We’ve certainly been able to purchase some very large ones this year and the taste has been excellent. Not sure if that’s where they came from or not…
Canada has focused more on honeyberries as they are more cold hardy and not as fussy about soil ph. they are starting to catch on in the northern tier states here.
