Cherries and good strawberries. By “good” strawberries I’m specifically exclusing those miserable Driscoll California ones that look great but taste like they were carved out of balsa wood. Other stone fruits like peaches and nectarines and plums are not to be found in winter either because they don’t transport well. Watermelon is a hard find in winter too. Summer squash like zucchini tend to make themselves scarce as the weather gets colder.
Good strawberries are always going to be local because good strawberries are ripened in the field until they’re soft and sweet and as such they don’t transport worth a damn. Here in Oregon we have the Hood variety–they’re an early bearing plant that starts producing in mid to late May and the season for them is over sometime in June but while they’re available they’re amazing. I buy half flats at minimum (six pints) at farm stands and basically live on the things for a month or so.
We also have Rainier cherries, which have started to become more common in other areas as people figure out how good they are and plant trees. Rainier cherries are awesome for the same reason as Hood strawberries–they’re very sweet and bruise easily and because they’re a yellow/blush variety the bruises really show so transporting them more than a couple hundred miles maximum is going to be a logistical nightmare.
To find the best fruits in your area, find local farmer’s markets or roadside fruit stands where fresh picked produce is sold hours after it left the field. You’ll pay a little more but you’re paying the grower directly and giving them all the love for doing the hard work.
Figs. Good figs, like the nice big ones from the the Mediterranean or turkey. Not the slimy bland ones from California that are about the size of 4 or 5 quarters stacked atop each other…
As mentioned above, most fruits and vegetables are available year-round today. However, GOOD fruits and vegetables, especially locally grown are seasonal. Non-local fruits like bananas and apples and vegetables like tomatoes are usually picked green and sometimes forced to ripen quickly for sale. If you can find locally grown, picked at peak ripeness fruits and vegetables, you’ll find their flavor and texture is completely different from what you’re likely used to.
I wonder what children of this generation and the next will consider the “real taste” of fruit, especially with artificial flavors (e.g. banana, blueberry, raspberry, etc.) so prevalent. I believe I’m old enough to have eaten Gros Michel bananas in the 60’s and remember the current Cavendesh bananas being more flavorful into the '70’s. With the Cavendesh probably facing the same fate as the Gros Michel (commercially not viable due to plant disease), what the current and next generation consider the taste of a banana may be completely different from what we know.
This. For most (not all) produce, shipping quality is opposed to eating quality. Produce that ships well needs to be bred to have firm skins and firm flesh, and often needs to be picked unripe in order to retain that firmness and/or not to be overripe when it reaches the consumer.
There are exceptions. Some varieties of apples improve in cold storage and if properly stored and handled can be held quite a while and shipped a long way. Some varieties of winter squash improve in storage (though in this case the storage needs to start warm and then become only moderately cool), and winter squash normally has hard rinds. There are other things for which shipping quality doesn’t essentially contradict eating quality. Local varieties of produce may still be better because they might have been selected for eating quality even when that doesn’t produce the highest yield; but that’s likely to depend on the particular farm.
I often wonder what the tropical produce that I can only get as shipped really ought to taste like. Probably, even for things that I think taste pretty good, I’m only getting a thin shadow of what they might be if I could get them where they grow.
Good tomatoes and stone fruit are only available in the summer, like strawberries. Pomegranates used to only be available on the fall, but I’ve seen them recently. Maybe from Chile? Peas (not sugar snaps or snow peas, but real peas in the pod, that you have to open) are only available briefly in the spring. Fresh cranberries are only available in the fall. Most of the interesting varieties of apples are only available in the fall, too. Pumpkins are only sold in the fall. They would keep, but i think there’s no demand after Thanksgiving, so no one stores them. Asparagus is much more available in season, although maybe you can get it off-season these days.
I live in a major metropolitan area. Like, the biggest or second biggest. You cannot find stone fruit, strawberries, most berries, watermelon or cherries in winter. You can find inferior ones in the fall and spring but not in February.
Also no quenepas, tamarindos or fresh figs outside of summer.
Fiddleheads grow where I live, but not ramps, and I’ve never seen either in a store. Are they difficult to transport? In the past, I grew the wonderful Brandywine tomatoes, but you’ll never even see those in a farmer’s market because they don’t even stand up to transporting into the house with the skins intact. But they taste so good.
Some breeds of apples are also easier to find in the fall, and Honey Crisp is the best example of this. Persimmons are also hard to find, except in the late fall, and are unpopular because most people don’t know that by the time they’re fully ripe and really do taste good, they start to get spots on them and people tend to think they’re spoiled.
I’ve brought Brandywines (Quisenberry strain / Pink Brandywine) to farmers’ market; and also Mrs. Horst’s Oxheart, which IMO is just as good. They do need very careful handling, and often have small cracks (I eat the ones with large cracks); and I have to recheck at market and make sure there’s nothing I need to pull back off the stand. But it is possible. I’ve seen others do it, too.
I’ve had customers take one look and walk away snickering. And I’ve had customers crowd into the stand to get them; as well as ask for them weeks before they’re ready. It’s going to be a late year this year.