@zone7a yup yup Figs and Tomatoes neither will I ever purchase and enjoy from any store even in California. Awful
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thats about everything here in rural n. Maine. apples can be good if theyre from new england and pomegranites are good but they keep so they can be picked ripe but everything else is terrible.
tomatoes and figs yea
persimmons as well since they won’t put more american ones on the shelves since they go bad too fast… all you get is the asian ones which are way different.
I think strawberries maybe have the least difference for me
I may be in the minority on this one, but if you look around enough (and spend enough $$), you can often get very good peaches and/or nectarines from the grocery. Enough that I generally prefer them to the pick your own and farmer’s market options (donut peaches being the common exception). But, there are a ton of bad peaches in the store- it is just a matter of shopping around and going from store to store until I find good ones.
Though I admit that is much tougher in certain off months, like April when the Southern hemisphere has wound down, but the Southern parts of the Northern (Mexico) are just starting up. So, it is either very old ones from Chile, or an early season variety (often not as good) from Mexico.
I’m sure it is tougher in rural areas, where there just not as many grocery stores within easy reach. I just counted 10 different chains (probably 30+ stores) that I pass by semi-regularly.
Things to looks for-
1.) Speckles, often on the non-stem side of the fruit. I’ve heard these referred to as sugar spots.
2.) You can often just tell when it has been in the fridge for too long
3.) Smell, especially the nice rose smell of white peaches
And they may not be cheap- recently, I’ve paid anywhere from $3 to $6 per pound and I bet it will be $7-8 if I go to the priciest store (which I only go to if I strike out elsewhere).
The few times I’ve gotten figs at the store I’ve been disappointed. Of course, I only like really good figs, so I’m not always happy with the ones I pick myself. Luckily my wife isn’t as picky and is fine with the rest.
Actually, I often prefer the strawberries from the grocery store over what I grow (used to grow, at this point) or the farmer’s market. At least, if you get the good ones- Driscols organic strawberries are often very good. I think part of it is the variety they grow. The local berries are often very tender, but that isn’t a big selling point to me- I prefer big flavor, rather than a soft aromatic berry. I a pint of strawberries at the FM today (my daughter wanted them…) for $10 and while she liked them and I didn’t think they were bad, I though the $4-6 per pound ones from the store were a bit better. At least when you can find a pack with mostly ripe berries.
I absolutely love big crisp sweet (20+ brix) cherries from the store. I’ve both grown (mostly unsuccessfully) and bought cherries from the farmer’s market and I’ve never had any that remotely compare to the store. I think one time they got up to ~17 brix, but they still didn’t have the firm crispness. I think the problem is that the varieties which get crisp tend to crack in our area.
Another problem with cherries is chemical residue- it is often near the top of the 10 fruits with the highest levels. So I try to only buy organic ones and it seems like there are far fewer places selling them now. Even as we enter the prime season, I only saw them at Whole Foods. And they were the Ranier ones, not Bing. They were good, but not the best and I felt a bit guilty paying $11 a pound.
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To spread awareness, wash your fruit in baking soda for some pesticide removal https://youtube.com/shorts/t-WA0XZk7Ws?feature=shared
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I try to pick Granny Smith grown locally every year since I found out how good they can be when grown in eastern WA. Pickin’ them when ripe they look, smell and taste better. Pink on cream, with nuanced flavors that remind you of the subtler things you may encounter in a store-bought fruit.
Also, strawberries grown up here are a world apart from the tepid things grown in Prunedale & Watsonville, California, where winter might pay a visit for 48 hours every seven years - in the 1980s when I lived near there. Strawberries should come ripe any day now in this region. I can hardly wait to spend time & $$ at my favorite U-Pick farm growing them.
Because some fruits can be grown in my back yard that exceeded expectations, I grow what I can. And enjoy. And give thanks.
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I’m not going to go through a list of fruits that are better or worse. Instead, I’m going to discuss genetics and specifically tomato genetics. The general case of tomatoes can be shown to apply for most fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes have been selected to be firm, to hold ripe for weeks without spoiling, to readily change from green to red/pink from ethylene gas, to be meatier, higher lycopene, and a dozen other traits I could name. What have they not been selected for? FLAVOR!!! It makes no sense to me why people will buy those flavorless colored cardboard excuses for tomatoes from a grocery store. I grow heirloom tomatoes almost exclusively because they taste so much better. Now extend this to most of the fruit that can be purchased in a store. I can make specific exceptions for a few fruit that live or die depending on taste. But for most of the rest, it is all about commercial characteristics of which flavor is not one.
Ask a commercial tomato grower why he grows tomatoes that taste so bad. He will tell you “I get paid by the pound, not for flavor.”
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I had a Chandler strawberry yesterday that was significantly better than any strawberry I’ve ever gotten from the store.
Outstanding balance of sweet and tart with a very strong strawberry flavor.
We have more strawberries coming of different varieties, but we are on year three now of trying to get good strawberries so I’m happy we are making progress.
After dedicating two years and two 4 x 4 raised beds to honeoye strawberries, they now form decorative rings around trees. We just couldn’t get outstanding flavor out of those strawberries, and some of them even had a weird aftertaste.
Chandler is so good and we have some San Andreas with strawberries on them that we haven’t got to try yet and then there’s a bed full of Mara de Bois that we are waiting for some to ripen. I hope they are as good as Chandler or even better.
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Figs- Around Novemberish ALDI has excellent dried Mission Figs… i dont think i can pull that off here.
Cherries- ALDI currently has some nice sweet cherries… ive let them sit on the counter for a week and they keep getting better.
Apricots- all tasteless to me from the grocery store.
Nects and Peaches- I think i have got lucky a couple of times at the grocery store…the rest are worthless.
Verry Cherry Plum- Im not sure i can even grow it here… so have to rely on the grocery store for them… i like them.
Fuji Apples- really nice apples if stored for a month or two or three… i dont grow it yet but i am going to based on storage potential i have seen.
Golden Delicious- the west coast ones and michigan ones in the grocery store arent that great unless stored then they get tastier. The ones in my orchard are much much better.
Opal Apples- I cant grow this one either and i really really like it stored a couple of months. The Kroger ones are much better than the Walmart ones here.
Bosc pears- really enjoy the expensive large ones… not so much the bagged little ones.
Im picking bluebs and black rasps now and a few strawbs here and there… also eating a few sour cherries. Honeyberries were amazing this year and keep getting better.
So i admit that i do like some things at the grocery.
Im a sucker for bananas and pineapple… i dont grow either of those and luckily they are aplenty at my grocers.
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if I can grow it, and it can be stored, it’s better at the farmer’s market or local variety store (they have more than one or two “kind” of each fruit). if I can’t grow it, it’s best bought from the Asian market.
if you can’t store it long, or if it’s a soft fruit that bruises easy, it’s better grown at home.
so for me it’s figs, plums, peaches, berries, tomatoes are best from home. apples and pears and say, rhubarb? if the store has a good selection, they might be better for sure. any tropical fruit I can’t even grow really.
cherries are variable I think the Rainier from my friend’s tree are the best in the world, sunshine flavor, just incredible. nothing compares, from home or store.
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Here’s a pic of some organic nectarines I got at Stop and Shop yesterday for $5/lb. They measure between 16-18 brix. I’ve seen higher (low 20’s), but these are high enough for me to consider them pretty good.
They had a lot of speckles and looked good, so I got 4-5 lbs.
The organic peaches they had only looked ok, so I got just a few to try. One peach was 8-9 brix and another was 12-13. Both were OK to eat (decent flavor and texture), but not what I look for.
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I wish they would put variety on the tags!
This is how I know I like Summer Royal grapes…although I don’t have a plant currently, it is nice to know varieties even if from the grocery store.
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Agreed. Hate generic labels like “plum”. Sometimes you can look up the skew info to find out, but I’m not sure I trust it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the variety name on the little stickers, at least with stonefruit.
The closest I’ve come to this is when the put the fruit out while still in the shipping box. Then there is often the variety name stamped on the end of the box. Of course, it is possible that they re-use a box, so you can also check the pick date, which is often listed near the variety name. If the pick date was pretty recent, then there is a better chance that is what you are getting. If the pick date is old, the store could just be re-using the box with some other variety.
I don’t think I’ve seen the SKU actually tie back to a variety. Normally it is something like “Red plum” or “Tree ripe yellow nectarine” or “organic white nectarine” (organic prefixes wtih a “9”, etc).
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I think i looked up the distributor and the code for kiwi once from a local store and found the variety. Maybe that was a one off
Unsure if this counts as the variety name, but I found these at my local super market.
They were awful. I’ve never had a good apricot from the store in my life. Probably even worse than figs in terms of finding a good one from the store that isn’t dried, though I rarely try anymore.
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Could happen if the distributer thinks a variety is distinctive enough to track separately. I don’t think it happens much.
Those actually look pretty good. Often the clamshell apricots can be pretty good, especially the white ones. Selling them in the clamshell probably means they don’t need to be picked quite as underripe. I’ve found the trick with apricots is to not be too anxious. I let them sit on the counter until they soften, even if it takes a week or two.
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They looked absolutely beautiful in their package. They looked so good they motivated me to buy them despite past experiences!
So far the first one I had was firm and as sour as a lemon. Second one I had was mealy and unpleasant but not as sour. The rest are on the counter. Maybe they’ll get better with age but I have a hunch I’ll be dehydrating them soon.
I would have never guessed that it’s way easier to find a good jack fruit in the store than a good apricot. If folks have never tried one, jack fruit from the store is usually pretty good (at least near me) if you pick the ones that look or smell ripe!