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["road's end farm" <organic101@linkny.com>]

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