I purchased some strawberries the other day with packaging that emphasized that they were hydroponically grown. They are tasteless. Isn’t that something that the producers would have had significant control over based on the method used to grow them?
What makes the difference between a delicious strawberry and a bland strawberry?
Warmth, sunshine and genetics. The vast majority of commercially available strawberries are bred for hardiness and looks, not flavor. Flavorful strawberries are ripened naturally, are full of juice and are also a nightmare to ship because they smoosh badly and are right on the verge of going bad at any moment–because they’re dead ripe. Commercial strawberries are bred to be tough and shippable, which means less juice. They’re picked before peak ripeness because that makes them easier to pack and ship but also guarantees they’ll be bland and flavorless. Want good strawberries? Find a source for Hood variety bare root plants and grow your own. You will never buy another clamshell pack of decorative wooden berries again.
Somehow I manage to buy satisfactory* grocery store strawberries 50% of the time. These are particularly flavorless.
*Perhaps due to low expectations
Or buy frozen ones which, like peas, are picked at peak of freshness and immediately preserved in that state.
Size is also a factor. Big produce sells better, but it’s just filled with more water (not necessarily “juice” just plain water), so what flavor is left after all the other selective breeding is further diluted.
This is why if you want good tomatoes for sauce, get canned ones. They can use varieties that taste good because it doesn’t matter if they get bruised or look ugly. They’re also generally canned pretty close to where they’re harvested, so they can be more ripe than those that are shipped to the grocery store. They may not be as good as homegrown heirloom varieties, but they’re better than “fresh” store-bought varieties.
I see there’s limited research suggesting that hydroponically grown strawberries may have characteristics making them taste at least as good as soil-grown ones. But that will depend on just what process is used and varieties involved.
Strawberries sold commercially have long been raised for size and color, less for taste.
Color me skeptical here.
Yes, growers of tomatoes sold for sauce claim to pick them near peak ripeness. But the qualities most favored in choosing commercial processing varieties appear to be size, uniformity, color, disease resistance, ease of mechanical harvest and texture (“mouthfeel”). Take one popular kind grown in California, where most processed tomatoes are grown, the lyrically named Hypeel 303. From the seed seller’s description:
“Hypeel 303 has become a main season standard variety because of the combination of consistently high field yield, excellent dice recovery, and high viscocity. This combination fits very well into the programs of a number of California processors. Hypeel 303 has an easily managed plant that grows in a prostrate habit on top of the bed.”
Yum!
Unfortunately, I’m not fond of what freezing does to the texture of strawberries–I do like dried ones though.
Quoted for truth, but I’ll add three things:
One: Nutrients and texture of the particular soil are also a factor. This can vary by variety: some strawberries only develop good flavor on particular soils, but those aren’t the same soils for all varieties.
Two: I’ve never grown Hood; I’m not sure whether they’d be winter hardy here. For flavor, I grow Sparkle.
Three: Try your local farmers’ market, in season. That’s not a guarantee, for two reasons: some markets allow produce to be sold that’s been shipped in (ask about the individual market’s rules), and some even among growers who sell locally select varieties for size and holding ability instead of for flavor; especially if they’ve got a lot of customers who just want big berries that will keep well. But at some farmers’ markets you can get very good strawberries.
Either you’ve got an extraordinary grocery store, or it’s low expectations.
I don’t know enough about hydroponics techniques to know whether there’s something specifically about hydroponics that might be contributing. I expect the plants are fed everything that the growers know they need – but there might well be something in healthy soil that we don’t yet know that they need; not obviously need to survive or produce berries, but possibly to produce best flavor and/or nutrition.
Won’t help much if the variety was bred for size and production instead of for flavor.
Commercially frozen berries generally taste at best just passable to me.
Oh – if strawberries have green tips, they’re not ripe. And they won’t get any riper; many fruits ripen further after harvest, but strawberries don’t. They’ll get softer and then rot, but they won’t actually ripen once they’re off the plant.
Some varieties may not be ripe even if they’re red all the way to the ends; some need to ripen to a darker red than others. But that very dark red, if on a variety that ripens bright red, means they’re starting to rot and the flavor will be off. Plants are complicated.
Dunno where “here” is, but Hoods are happy in the Willamette Valley and into Central Oregon–they’ll handle a bit of snow if they’re well mulched but the berries will need some heat by June to be really good. They’re an early variety with about a three week peak season toward the end of June and that’s it. They don’t fit well with commercial production, but when they’re in season we grab up as many as we can find–I basically live on strawberries for a month or so in summer.
Finger Lakes, New York State. (If you click on my avatar, you can see my location in the popup. Discourse doesn’t offer a way to see it without clicking.)
We’ve got a significantly different climate than Oregon, and are quite a bit colder in winter. Heat in June is erratic; some years yes, some no. I do get some vegetable seed from the Northwest, but while some things do well in both places, others are better suited to one or the other.
My early variety is Earliglow, with Jewel for the next one up; Sparkle runs later in the season. Earliglow gets nearly the flavor of Sparkle, but not quite, and runs out early in the season. Jewel’s a fairly decent combination for size and flavor – not huge, but bigger than either Earliglow or Sparkle; and not quite as flavorful, but still very definitely tastes like a strawberry; also falls in season between the two, most years.
I’ve been trying to settle on a good everbearing variety–tried Tristar but ended up grubbing them up, the berries are small and bland with way too seedy a tip on them. There are a few varieties of coastal adapted berries that do well in Portland and get sweeter with less warmth. Someday I’d like to have a big field of various strawberry varieties so I can live on them ALL summer.
I was going to suggest earliglow. I used to be able to buy named strawberries at the WTC farmers market (back before 9/11) and the earliglow were my favorite. The name sounded like they’d just been bred to extend the season, but they had fabulous flavor. They are small, though.
I’ve never had sparkle, but the plant catalog says good things about it.
Sadly, chipmunks love strawberries. I’ve given up.
Is it safe to say that, in theory at least, hydroponically grown strawberries could be (what most people would agree to be) delicious?
If so, what would a grower need to do to make that happen?
Grow alpine strawberries. Consumers have been conditioned however to expect megalostrawberries, despite their typically poor flavor.
I grow a couple varieties of alpines. They’re tasty, but not all that productive.
I definitely prefer them for anything that involves cooking or baking the strawberries, but it doesn’t really work for eating out of hand well. Just like canned tomatoes are superior to supermarket tomatoes, except they’re not good for eating out of hand or putting in a salad. Strawberries and tomatoes are the two produce items I find most different in terms of quality and flavor between their home-grown (or farmer’s market) and supermarket versions.
I don’t know enough about hydroponics to be able to answer either part of that. In addition to the possibility that flavor’s affected by factors within the soil that we don’t yet understand well enough to mimic, it’s possible that being grown outdoors with varying weather and exposure to pests can increase flavor – some of the flavor might, for instance, be due to chemicals the plant increases due to pest pressure, to discourage certain pests. But I don’t know for sure.
If it is possible, then it’s also a question of whether it would be profitable for the grower.
I think it’s the picking that’s the big difference on both strawberries and tomatoes; both are at their best when they’re also the most fragile, so they’re picked early, even green in the case of tomatoes, and either artificially ripened with ethylene gas, or just sold in a less than optimal state of ripeness.
Tomatoes are what are called climacteric, meaning (among other things), that they’ll continue to ripen off the plant. So you can pick green tomatoes and they’ll eventually fully ripen. So in that case, just let them sit a while, and they’ll ripen some more.
Strawberries are not climacteric, so they’re as ripe as they’re going to get when they’re picked. Same for peaches- they may soften, but they’re not going to get any sweeter.
I’m not sure there’s really a huge lack of flavor in the commercial varieties of tomatoes, if they actually ripen on the vine appropriately. Ones like “Celebrity” or “BHN444” apparently taste pretty good if they’re fully ripe, even though they’re bred for commercial growing. It’s when they pick them that makes the difference.
In general, the commercial varieties are more than likely bred for disease resistance over everything else; I have yet to see a tomato cultivar that touts its shipping/storage suitability, but nearly all of the hybrids trumpet their various disease resistances.
Strawberries are less distinguishable; there’s not much that would distinguish a Hood strawberry plant from a Sequoia plant in terms of what they advertise.
That is a big part of it. But variety also makes a huge difference in the flavor with both of those crops.
If you pick Sparkle when it’s unripe, you won’t get the flavor. But you can pick a shipping variety at its absolute prime of ripeness, and it’s still likely to not taste like anything.
True to a point. If they’re picked almost ripe, they’ll develop full flavor. If they’re picked really green, they’ll probably eventually turn red (or whatever their ripe color is), and they’ll certainly eventually soften; but they won’t get full flavor if they haven’t been on the plant long enough.
Something most people buying tomatoes don’t know: “vine-ripe” (or “vine-ripened”) is a technical term; and what it means is that the fruit has developed the first faint blush of color on one end.
Some commercial tomatoes taste better than others. But your basis for comparison is probably lacking. Try a properly-ripened Sudduth strain Brandywine sometime; they’re famous for a reason. There are a number of others which have equivalent flavor; most of them are rarer, but again if you’ve got a good farmers’ market (or a friendly tomato-growing neighbor), or even an unusual grocery which sources some of its product from local growers and has a customer base that will buy them fast enough and pay extra to cover the inevitable losses, you may be able to find them.
Huh? I see them all the time, in catalogs aimed at commercial growers.
Again, that depends on what company’s information you’re reading.
–Also maybe it depends on whether you know how to read the descriptions. I’m seeing Sequoia, like Hood, advertised for flavor; and also being advertised specifically for a home garden variety, or in some cases for a home garden and market farmer variety. That means that it’s not a shipping variety. Some sites specifically say that the berries are soft, or that they’re not for shipping. Not surprising that you’re seeing similar advertising for two varieties that apparently have similar characteristics.
What is your opinion of the Driscoll brand of strawberries? I see them a lot in the supermarket along with the same brand of other berries. Googling, the company has proprietary breeds of berries. (I’ve been on a strawberry kick lately and have bought many pounds of them.) BTW are the plastic tubs the berries come in routinely recycled? I feel a little guilty about all of the packaging that I am putting in the recycling container.
I read the title as “Hypnotically Grown”.
Another subject altogether…