Varieties
Are all blueberries the same? Our
blueberries are the cultivated highbush type, not the
lowbush type harvested in Maine nor the wild highbush
berries some of our customers picked as children. We have
six varieties of blueberries, plus several more that we are
testing. Each row in the patch is marked so you can know
the variety you are picking if you wish.
Which are the sweetest? Which are the best
tasting? The simple answer to the question about
sweetness is that each of our varieties is sweet if the
berry is fully ripe. But there are differences. For
example, one of our varieties--Berkeley--is less tart when
not 100% ripe than the others, and when ripe its taste is
milder. At the other extreme, Herbert is quite tart right
up to the moment of ripeness, but when ripe has a complex
and delicious flavor that makes it our favorite for fresh
eating when we can take the time to pick carefully for
ripeness. A sure-fire way to determine ripeness is to look
for a dark circle where the stem hits the berry (on
Herbert, there is a noticeable swelling at that point when
the berry is fully ripe). Some varieties ripen earlier than
others; usually Blue Ray and Blue Haven are the earliest,
closely followed by Blue Crop then Berkely. Nelson and
Herbert are our latest ripening varieties.
How do I find a variety? Each row is
marked along the main path with the name of the variety.