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  • From: "road's end farm" <organic101@linkny.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Strawberries: variety report
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 18:38:47 -0400


Strawberry report from Road's End Farm:

Unfortuantely I can't report on Maxim, as I'd promised, because the deer got into the field and ate them all before they were ripe, along with a lot of the leaves. (They were in an edge row.) So about Maxim I can say only that the plants looked OK, the green fruit looked promising, and the deer apparently liked them fine.

On other varieties I had in this year: my standbys, Earliglow, Jewel, and Sparkle, all did well. Production was highest on Jewel, and in my opinion flavor best on Sparkle, neither of which is surprising. Flavor was also good in Earliglow and in Jewel. Jewel is by far the best flavored of the larger berries that I've tried here, and is acceptable to Sparkle customers when I run out of Sparkle. (It's not as large as the monstrosities sometimes seen in stores, but an occasional berry this year was pretty astonishing in size, and most of the Jewel were big by my standards.) Earliglow flavor is to my taste inbetween, even better than Jewel but not quite up to Sparkle. As expected Earliglow was the first to start ripening, Sparkle the last, and size dropped off fairly fast on both Earliglow and Sparkle, more slowly on Jewel.

I was also trialing Cavendish and Sable. Sable started with Earliglow, size dropped off almost as soon and even more dramatically than it does with Earliglow, and flavor was bland throughout. I won't grow this again. Cavendish came on with Jewel; berries were huge and it was very productive, but I thought it was very bland also. I did have some customers who said they liked it, and one who came back the next week and asked for it by name; but I don't know what else she had been eating to compare it to. It was better than a usual supermarket variety, being fairly juicy and (once the sun came out) somewhat sweet. I'll crop the same planting again next year and will leave the Cavendish in (there's not very much of it) to see what happens; but doubt I'll continue with it, despite the temptation of the fast picking. Will see what the customers have to say, though.

Flavor in strawberries can depend a lot on where they are grown, exact locality and soil as well as general climate; your mileage may vary. Honeoye tastes bland grown here, from what I hear it does produce good flavor in some locations. There does also seem to be a good bit of variation in individual tastes.

These were all grown under organic management in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, usually zone 5, in a moderately heavy (by upstate NY standards) clayey loam soil (Ovid), with straw mulch. Last year while the plants were developing we were much of the time in severe drought; they got some drip irrigation but as my pond had run out and the well was threatening to they didn't get as much as I would have liked. We did get rain last fall before freezeup, followed by what I used to think of as a normal winter, with some below zero temperatures and snow cover most of the winter, though not a huge amount of total snow accumulation over the season as a whole. The spring was mostly cool and cloudy, with a lot of rainy days but only moderate amounts of actual rain; it then suddenly turned hot (80's - 90's F) and dry during harvest season. Harvest started off slow, then everything came on with a bang once it warmed up, and ended fairly abruptly. The first harvest was a handful of berries June 11 from Earliglow and Sable; yesterday (July 11th) there were still a few usable berries in the field, but not many. Heaviest production overall was the week of July 4th, though Earliglow had dropped off by then and was producing most heavily around June 26.

-- Rivka




  • Re: [NAFEX] Strawberries: variety report, road's end farm, 07/12/2003

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