North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>]

I must respectfully disagree. Flavor is the only important thing. I 
have eaten the little wild lowbush blueberries in Alaska and the 
Washington Cascades and,  while I obviously have not tasted all the 
domestic ones, the only variety I have found that carries even a hint 
of the wild flavor is Blueray. The others are just sweet and bland.

I read an account once written by Frederick V. Colville on his early 
work on breeding commercial blueberries from wild selections. He said 
that when he had a field full of experimental hybrids he would go 
through and taste them, rejecting the ones that were not flavorful, 
no matter how big and strong they were. Today catalogs emphasize only 
size and ignore flavor.

Betty Mayfield
Northwest Oregon

At 07:30 AM 6/4/2008, Alan Haigh wrote:
> The main debate on blueberry flavor is usually between the wild 
> lowbush blueberries and the domesticated highbush (not that highbush 
> don't exist in the wild).  I really think the variations in flavor 
> should not be the primary motivation in highbush cultivar selection, 
> for most, the differences aren't that pronounced.
>
> Consider yeald and time of harvest (early, mid and late season) and 
> perhaps the size of the berry.  Personally I like the largest ones 
> because it takes less time to pick more and those huge berries sure 
> impress the neighbors.  I don't think size leads to blandness 
> incidentally and neither do my neighbors.  Believe me, once the 
> plants are well established harvesting is time consuming.
>
> In my zone 6, I recommend Duke and Patriot for early, Berkely and 
> Bluecrop for mid and most importantly, Elliot for a great delayed 
> crop.  Hartmanns carries these and many others including Bonus which 
> they claim produces the worlds largest blueberries.  They are big!
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