A classic favorite: Blueberries! These easy to grow perennial shrubs produce abundant crops of delicious berries. This year, we complied tasting notes on our varieties! Enjoy!
Week 1 of the OGW Blueberry Diaries
Blueberry season is ramping up here, and we’re excited to share our thoughts with you over the next few weeks as we compare different cultivars and share staff favorites! This week, we compared eight varieties: Brunswick, Burgundy, Darrow, Earliblue, Misty, Northsky, O’Neal and Patriot and judged them on size, texture, flavor, and abundance of harvest.
 Brunswick A prolific producer of medium to small sized berries, offering a sweet and mild flavor. |
 Burgundy Very prolific! Smaller berries with a strong, sweet wild blueberry flavor. Firm texture and perfect for eating by the handful! |
 Earliblue Berries are tart, medium to large sized, with a firm skin and jammy center. Perfect for blueberry pancakes! |
 Darrow Although is cultivar is considered a late season variety, we noticed several small pockets of perfectly ripe, very large and soft berries with a tart juicy pop, and many, many more to come. |
 Northsky A staff favorite for flavor! A rich, sweet melon flavor, very prolific with medium to large berries. |
 Misty Another staff favorite for large blueberries! Crunchy, sweet and very flavorful. One of the sweetest of the large coin size blueberries. |
 O’Neal Not many were ripe in week 1, but they are large and dense, with a sweet flavor. Second to Misty in sweetness for large berries! |
 Patriot Very prolific! Large, juicy, tart berries with a spicier, herbaceous flavor profile. A great baking berry to add an elevated blueberry flavor! |
Week 2 of the Blueberry Diaries
This last week was a bit cold and rainy, in stereotypical PNW “Junuary” weather. Because of the lack of local heat (our sincere apologies to the rest of the country), we saw a limited response to fruit ripening, but our harvest additions this week come from these 4 cultivars: Chippewa, NorthCountry, Spartan, and TopHat.
 Chippewa Blueberry A great choice for jams or smoothies! Medium large berries with a silky soft texture, and a mild, sweet flavor. |
 Northcountry Great yields of small and mighty, incredibly floral and sweet flavorful blueberries. Easy to harvest, and excellent for fresh eating by the handful. |
 Spartan HUGE BERRIES! Uncommon for larger bloobs, these retain a nice crunch and have a flavorful, mildly sweet bite. |
 TopHat A moderate yield here in week 2, but TONS to come! Medium-large berries with a true Blueberry flavor, and a dense, meaty flesh. |
Week 3 of the Blueberry Diaries
July is in full swing here in the PNW – highs in the 80s, and the perfect climate for ripening a plethora of our favorite summer bearing fruit treats! This week, we compare blueberries Draper, Duke, Toro, Liberty, and also took a swing through our Ribes and Rubus sections to compare gooseberries Hinnomaki Red and Selby, and from our Cane Berries, we’ve shown a peak of Crimson Night and Nova. We hope you enjoy!
 Duke The sweetest berry from week three! incredibly prolific berry with a juicy POP! These are in the small to medium size range, and while they are lovely at all stages, they gain a distinctly more complex blueberry flavor as they continue to ripen. |
 Draper A generally mild, firmly crunchy but sweetly flavored blueberry that is incredibly prolific and easy to harvest. A real winner for fresh snacking! |
 Liberty Our pal Paul loves this variety – it has a strong spicy “true” blueberry flavor with a juicy, jammy interior, which is excellent freshly eaten but would retain strong blueberry essence in baked goods. |
 Toro Large berries on this guy! They have a decent texture with a meaty crunch, and we think they’d be perfect for rendering or as an addition to smoothies, as they are a bit on the tart side. A plus to this cultivar is the way they grow hidden within the branches, which we think would be excellent for growers with strong bird-pressure. |
Week 4 of the Blueberry Diaries
This may be our final official week of Blueberry Diaries~ but we’ve saved some wonderful cultivars to share with you! Introducing: Bluecrop, BlueRay, Sunshine Blue and Jubilee! With a special appearance from our on-campus Pink Lemonade! We’ve had a fair amount of heat and humidity this past week, but these varieties have maintained integrity – we’re quite impressed.
 Bluecrop Big berries with a soft skin, moderately firm meaty texture. Sweet tart, and very prolific. |
 Blueray Large berries, very soft texture with a sweet, complex jammy flavor. We think these would be good for syrups and spreads, but likely won’t store well and should be utilized while fresh. |
 Jubilee A strong POP with a mild flavor, and a bit of a seeded crunch. These are sweet and great for fresh eating, even the skin retains a nice sweetness too. |
 Sunshine Blue Very abundant, and easy to harvest. These are one of the rare blueberries that retains a true strong “wild blueberry” flavor, along with a really pleasant crunch that maintains even in high humidity conditions. A wonderfully productive cultivar and a staff favorite! |
 Pink Lemonade A true crowd favorite. These are not only adorable, but their pink hue seems to be a detractor for birds, who don’t recognize them as ripe. Very mildly sweet and crunchy. Moderately productive, and pairs gorgeously next to another late season bloob with nearly black fruit: Nocturn. |
We know our favorite blueberry varieties, how about you?
Connect with us to chat about our extensive collection!
info@onegreenworld.com – (877) 353-4028