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British Strawberries This Year in Shops
Soho
Posts: 312 Forum Member
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Never known such a poor year for British Strawberries. I've tried all the supermarkets Asda, Waitrose, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys etc. Since April I've been buying them not a single decent punnet, most have gone straight in the bin.
Most are tiny many at the bottom of the punnet going moldy, others dark red with a horrible taste they just are not good.
The best punnet I have was the second they appeard in shops. It seems cherries have become more popular this year due to the bad quality in Stawberries.
P.S - Not in the position to pick my own before somebody comments. :-)
Most are tiny many at the bottom of the punnet going moldy, others dark red with a horrible taste they just are not good.
The best punnet I have was the second they appeard in shops. It seems cherries have become more popular this year due to the bad quality in Stawberries.
P.S - Not in the position to pick my own before somebody comments. :-)
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Comments
I don't think picking your own would help you much, except you can taste a few and not continue.
One glance at the weather this summer is enough to lower my expectations about British strawberries ( which I normally consider the best in the world). They need plenty of rain to swell the fruit and then a hot dry spell to ripen and sweeten them. The weather this year couldn't have been worse I don't think. I feel sorry for the strawberry farmers. Hopefully we will get a hot settled spell and now the strawberry season is so long they may pull something back from the year.
The small ones are usually the best! Although I do find strawberries the most disappointing of soft fruit. So much aroma but so little taste.
Instead of PYO - why not grow your own next year? All the planters are now in the end-of-summer clearances so is a good time to buy.
i've had them every day for breakfast since about april very sweet very flavoursome.
Herefordshire are better!
Me too, strawberries are so tasteless these days, the only half decent ones I have tried were Scottish from Sainburys. Raspberries are my favourite fruit.
I had Kent ones this week, they were ok but a bit soft.
They always seem to be quite bland.
Bought a big punnet of cherries today from the market for a quid and they are the best I've ever had.
Wish I'd bought more.
Most of the time i come back from the supermarkets strawberryless as nothing is up to scratch. So far this year i have had 2 what i would consider to be good punnets. So its not great really. Better than last year though.
The thing is, don't even bother buying strawberries in a supermarket. They are nearly always the Elsanta variety, which are grown for their bright red colour to fool shoppers into thinking they are actually nice to eat, when in fact they're really bland. Buy them from a farm shop, in season, instead.
Same here! I can't remember a time I've had as good strawberries than this year! We get ours at a fruit/veg market every week, cheap as chips!
The stawberries always seem tasteless until about mid-June, when they started tasting great (daughter would eat them without asking for a sprinkling of sweetener). At the moment they are tasting good to me but I do make sure I pick a punnet with smaller ones in and darker if possible.
i used to pick strawberries and raspberries, some of the strawberries were the size of a large potato, not sure of the variety, but we got paid per punnet so the bigger the better.:D:D
With the raspberries you got paid by weight, so if it rained the farmers would tell you to stop picking and go on your break as it put the weight up.
Given that, can you guess where most people peed when they needed to?
Enjoy your raspberries.:D
thank god!!!
i was beginning to think i was living in alternate universe to everyone else.....:D
hoorah!!
enjoy your eton mess!!! such a lovely combination *licks lips and sneaks off to fridge*
The small ones are the tastiest, we grow all our own fruit such as these, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, apples, pears and plums, but we grow wild alpine strawberries for the birds, goodness me they're sweet and tasty!
And you'd be absolutely correct, forced growth, under artificial circumstances, never make for taste.
Try planting up some old classics like 'Cambridge Favourite' - those are tasty and reliable.
The best ever though are 'Marshmello' - a gorgeous mid-season variety.
I threw a punnet away from M&S, who usually have lovely strawbs as they were too sour to eat, despite being covered in Truvia.
There are bargain cherries to be had though. 800g for £6 yesterday from Waitrose, a big box. Huge cherries and very sweet. I don't normally buy cherries due to the ridiculous price.