I think it's really the varieties they grow here. I've tried Charlie and Festival and even home-grown I don't think they're worth the trouble. I just ignore strawberries these days, no matter where they come from. With your eyes closed you might as well be eating zucchini.

Ugh...definitely disappointing. We're in CA and I bought some recently that were good. They were from Driscoll's who I know have growers from all over...not just CA.

This link is probably way more than you need, but here goes...

https://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152944880/bigger-means-better-not-with-strawberries

Too early, IMO.

I buy organic, and they always seem to have more flavor than the conventional kind, but it's still too early...

If they are tasteless or sour, I serve Strawberries Romanof. Rinse berries but leave the stems on, pile 5 or so on your plate on which you have also placed a dollop of sour cream and 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar. Hold the berry by the stem and leaves, dip in the sour cream, then in the sugar, and eat.

Unless it is in season for our local strawberries,

http://www.brownfarmsstrawberries.com/

I usually just buy the frozen strawberries in the tubs. Anything that can ship, just looks good. It is not a variety that tastes good. The local ones, you pick-your-own or buy at the farm or off the truck the morning picked and transport VERY CAREFULLY home. They taste fantastic, BECAUSE, they do not ship well.

Buy local, in season, or just buy the frozen. They are varieties that taste great and are picked at their peak and flash frozen. I don't even put up my own frozen anymore, because the ones in the store are so good. The old little square? frozen strawberries do not begin to compare to the new frozen.

I don't think it's so much that it's early--they don't taste any better no matter when they're picked. If you look at the IFAS variety recommendations, they're all about big, red, white shoulders, able to stand up to shipping, not at all about taste, although I see there's some info now about the possibility of growing alpine strawberries in a home garden. But the only starts I ever see for sale are still always Charlie or Festival unless you buy them by the hundreds.

I also dislike the fact that whatever they treat the roots with when they bundle the starts seems to attract ants like crazy, well before the berries appear.

Florida strawberries are the only one I will buy. This past week I bought 2 cases (16 pounds) and they were fantastic. I made plain jam, jam with Drambuie and jam with Cointreau and Drambuie. Total of 25 1/2 pints.

Carol, ,I checked my canning records and this is the same week I have been buying them.

Pinetree (superseeds.com) sells alpine strawberry seeds, but I think they have to be stratified before planting.

And I cook the ones that aren't sweet enough to eat fresh. I make my fruit pudding cake or roast. Chopped, they're a nice addition to banana walnut bread too.

Roasting them is so yummy and they disappear almost immediately. I just toss sliced berries with a few spoonfuls of brown sugar and roast in a shallow nonreactive pan at 400F for about 30 minutes.

IME, most commercially grown strawberries - what you find in grocery stores - regardless of their place of origin, are tasteless. They are bred for size and ability to store and travel well.....taste is far down the line of necessary attributes :-) The ones that taste best are your own or those locally grown ones you can find in season at farmer's markets and fruit stands. Sorry, but roasted strawberries (!!) are just not gonna cut it for a shortcake - no way, Jose!!

Strawberries are very easily grown in the home garden....at least here (have no idea about Florida) but different cultivars perform differently in different areas. Hood, Tristar and Quinault are the most popular sellers here and produce an abundance of smallish but very sweet and very juicy fruit. No need for any roasting!!!

I bought an Allstar on clearance at WalMart last year, and it has very sweet berries, but they're small. Plus, this warm weather has them bearing now, and they are supposed to be June berries. I don't know if it was mislabeled or what, but I'm not really happy with them. I wanted larger berries.

I miss living in Bradenton. There was always someone on the side of the road to the beach selling Plant City strawberries during season. I went to the Strawberry festival once when I first moved to FL, but wasn't too impressed.

I agree with Chloebud. Here in Southern California we grow a lot of strawberries, and when they're out of season they're shipped in. If we can't find strawberries it usually means there was an Act of God, not just out of season. However, at the very beginning and very end of each crop the strawberries can be on the low flavor side. Macerating them can bring out the flavor, as well as other preparations. When they're at height of season, they're like candy, popping with flavor, sweet and tender, and we talk about not spoiling strawberries by doing anything at all to them except maybe huling them.

Some growers do plant for flavor. All store bought strawberries are some kind of hybrid. The forest floor wild strawberries of old are tiny, smaller than a fingertip, and extremely delicate to the point of falling apart, like an overripe raspberry, when just picked. Sometimes, they're only good for jam.

I always smell fruit before I buy it. Except bananas, which do ripen, so I buy them green. I smell the box of strawberries, and look carefully. if the color isn't rich, and the fragrance isn't there, I don't bother buying them, but they're most often good to excellent.

I wonder if this is a shipping issue or a price tolerance issue. Not all stores here have such excellent produce. I know that in some other parts of the country, people in general are willing to spend even less for excellent produce. Perhaps, that's why they grow so many flavorless berries? Because they can sell them cheaper and people will buy them?

I learned from my friend who owned a produce store that strawberries break down faster than any other fruit, so they're picked and shipped practically green, then gassed to get them to turn. So what you eat from the store are actually not ripe strawberries. That's why those allowed to ripen on the vine are so much sweeter.

I've rarely ever seen a huge strawberry that had any flavor at all, but perhaps you're lucky. I only buy strawberries when the home grown are in - they actually taste like strawberries.

Mutants!

Or "conjoined".

I've bought plenty of such ginormous organic strawberries in local stores, during the summer. Maybe not grapefruit - more like orange-sized, and they're usually pretty sweet too = )

I think the taste has a lot has to do with what varieties are planted. We once had a farm outside of Clovis that grew the best strawberries; the stand always sold out before noon. Then an adult grandson decided that a different variety would give them a better yield.... totally tasteless. The stand was gone in just a few years because no one wanted to buy their berries.

you guys and girls are missing the most important thing.

if strawberries are white around the stem they are not ripe.

nancy.......I hate to say this but your remarks appear to be the direct opposite of what you are intending :-) A soil pH of 7.0 is neutral. Below 7.0 is acidic....above 7.0 is alkaline. If your soil pH is upto 8.5, then you have highly alkaline soil and that is NOT suitable for growing blueberries.

Like most plants, strawberries also require acidic soil (6.5 to 5.5)....about the same requirements for growing the blueberries. Native soils here have a pH of around 6.0 to 6.3 and both strawberries and blueberries are grown commercially without the need for pH amendments, which are notably hard to sustain.

btw, there is no correlation between "sweet" (aka alkaline) soil and sweet fruit :-) I'd bet your blueberries are properly sweet when harvested and they like a rather "sour" (aka acidic) soil. Strawberries are no different.

if strawberries are white around the stem they are not ripe.

Used to be true, not true of many current commercial varieties.

ETA I believe the idea is to make a berry which is stronger structurally for shipping. As mentioned above, taste is way down the list of desirable qualities for varieties meant for commercial production, of any fruit or vegetable.

And just a further comment but the sweetness of ripe fruit is determined by its brix....the soluble sugar content. This has little to nothing to do with soil but primarily genetics, sunlight and temperatures and when the fruit is harvested. Fruit that is harvested before fully ripe - like commercially grown strawberries - will always have a lower brix or sugar content/sweetness level than those that are field ripened.

This discussion reminded me of some reporting I heard on NPR several years back, about UC Davis' strawberry breeding program and how most of the commercial strawberry varieties originated there. It has a bit of history about how the fruit has been developed over the years as well. I recall in another segment, they mentioned a new variety that was being developed that was very sweet, but not red.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/01/327256662/breeding-battle-threatens-key-source-of-california-strawberries

And I know that Pinetree also has a yellow strawberry they claim is sweeter than the red ones.

Still, we get dark red strawberries in the stores that are both fragrant and delicious, tender ripe, and sweet like candy. It CAN be done. Whether it can be done so there's plenty for everybody, I don't know, but it's not a phantom. It exists. If it exists, it can be reproduced. If enough are reproduced, the price will come down and everybody will buy them.

It used to be. In my young days all the area in Dade County FL south of Kendall was given over to vegetable and strawberry production and those were very good berries. But what you left out, plllog, is that for fruit like that to make its way to stores again, it would also have to prove to giant conglomerates that it's every bit as cheap to produce, not just that it's reasonable.

As for yellow strawberries and pineberries, the Gala apple should serve as a cautionary tale. A fruit which was a perfectly splendid red-streaked yellow variety that has been beaten down to an equivalent of the inaptly-named Red Delicious via the demand of grocery store chain buyers that it needed to be RED, REALLY, REALLY RED no matter what that did to the taste. Sigh.

I am back today from spending the day at the strawberry festival in Plant City Florida.

It was crowded, and so many people enjoying the strawberries and other attractions there. Strawberries were good and sweet and the smell was like perfume in the air.

I just went for the fun value since I am lucky enough to have near by the u pick farms for strawberries and I can always pick a perfect basket.

Dcarch, those strawberries would make a good muddled strawberry margarita.:)

Here are some pictures from the festival

Silvia

Thanks, Silvia! That does look fun!

Silvia, that does look like fun.

Here I do grow strawberries and usually they are sweet and delicious. I agree that flavor depends on variety, I just had to grow Ozark Beauty, because that's what we grew when I was a child, but truthfully, I think I like the flavor of Earliglow better.

I do have one white strawberry, the berries are about the size of my fingernail. The kids love them, they are sweet and taste a bit like pineapple when ripe, but if you let them get over ripe even by a day or two they taste fermented and get very soft. My stepson and his family got me some seeds (yeah, strawberry seeds, something I'd never done), and I managed to get that one single plant to grow. Now it comes back every year and the kids always rush to see if they can find the white berries.

I seldom get berries from the store that taste like anything, they are like tomatoes, much better when they are local and in season. The more fragile but flavorful varieties cannot withstand shipping, so by necessity are sold only locally, where they are produced.

Annie

Thanks Pllog, the festival has been going on since the 1930's and people from all over the world come to enjoy the fun and the food.

Thanks Annie, one of the best things of the festival was the fair competitions and winning ribbons for handcrafted items, anything from preserves, clothing, quilts, plant containers, etc.

This was the sweet treats competition

Silvia

Wow, that wedding cake is impressive! Yeah, that would be my favorite part too, the competitions. Well, right after eating fresh strawberry pie, probably. (grin)

Annie