So they had been selling them for $50 per strawberry and they’re only 13 - 14 brix? For $50 I can plant a tree that will yield 30 - 40 lbs of fruit per year at 26 - 28 brix.
This is perhaps a good real world example of the marshmallow test.
Less than you need to rent in Manhattan, which is presumably their target market. I have a little less than 0.2 acres, and I've got 11 in-ground trees and another ten container trees. And I'm purposely keeping the property looking like any other house in our HOA, rather than planting things super close and dwarfing or espaliering them so that it looks like an experimental farm.
Granted some of the trees are actually on our neighbor's property (with their blessing), but still.
Other kinds of fruit have higher sugar content; jujube is reportedly highest, reaching thirties or even forties. For a strawberry 13-14 is quite good, though. Here's a sophisticated amateur who managed to hit 14.5 (with lower average):
Also that price is for "11 medium berries or eight large berries", and has now dropped to $20. That's still a bit ridiculous, though it's not clear to me what fraction of their harvest is actually saleable at the high price.
Parent was suggesting that for sugar-per-unit-of-land, a tree will bear larger volumes. I'd observe it will take less effort to maintain, be much more resilient to drought and pests, and have several other benefits, and it's why permaculturists prefer trees to annuals.
While I suspect you're being snarky about strawberries not being trees, there actually is a strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. I'm growing one, as it happens. They're a good looking tree, dark leaves, good canopy, lovely white bell-shaped flowers, but the fruit being reminiscent of strawberries more in the visuals than the flavour. This species appears on Madrid's coat of arms.
I was curious about this so call "strawberry" tree, the Arbutus unedo has nothing to do with strawberries. The fruits are delicious but if someone is expecting a strawberry, they will be highly disappointed.
Being prepared for disappointment is perpetually sage advice to the young.
Lots of things don't taste as you'd expect from their names -- monkfish is the first that springs to mind. I mean, sure, they're fish-flavoured, but ...
Mangosteens (my favourite fruit) are not at all like mangoes, kiwifruit taste more like a gooseberry than a chicken, dragonfruits are pleasantly delicate but way more bland than the fiery name suggests, and so on.
If you don't like the surprise of the fruit from strawberry tree not tasting like a strawberry, then the tree tomato (tamarillo) will really annoy you. : )
I learned about them a few years ago when a bought a house and was trying to identify the plants in the yard. Prior to that I had seen them in San Francisco and wondered if they were edible.
I snack on the fruits when ripe, but haven’t made anything out of them yet. Hummingbirds seem to love them and they’re evergreen, so they’re nice to have around aside from them fruit.
That's a fascinating tidbit about the tree. So the fruit is edible, just not delicious? I suppose it could theoretically be bred to produce a more sweet variety of fruit?
Louis Glowinski, a Melbourne resident, published a spectacular book about growing fruit in Australia back in 2008 [1] -- it's a marvellous read, especially for the domestic geographical references, as well as the proper alignment of months to seasons (obviously most other works are from the northern hemisphere, and the prevalence of things like 'pick these in late July' which need to be mentally rot-6'd, gets tiring real fast).
Anyway, there's a couple of probably unintended running jokes in that book -- the phrases 'highly variable' and 'good for jams' are frequently used when it feels like he's trying to be polite about good, but often far from great, fruit.
I recall he used both phrases for this species.
I think with a lot of these kinds of fruit trees that haven't been carefully selected over centuries, you don't have lots of named varieties, and consequently they're usually grown from seed rather than grafted, so in turn, combined with climate and soil variations, it's a bit of a pot-luck on whether you have great, or merely edible, fruit.
So, yes, you're right, we could start breeding better varieties, but this is an expensive pursuit for tree crops, and few are engaged in it these days.
Apples get a bit of attention (look at the Cosmic Crisp f.e.) and citrus too, but realistically most of humanity's diet today is based around species selected by hunter-gatherers ~11k years ago.
Comments
So they had been selling them for $50 per strawberry and they’re only 13 - 14 brix? For $50 I can plant a tree that will yield 30 - 40 lbs of fruit per year at 26 - 28 brix.
This is perhaps a good real world example of the marshmallow test.
The real test is, how much money do you need to buy a house with a backyard (so you can plant a tree) in the NYC area?
Less than you need to rent in Manhattan, which is presumably their target market. I have a little less than 0.2 acres, and I've got 11 in-ground trees and another ten container trees. And I'm purposely keeping the property looking like any other house in our HOA, rather than planting things super close and dwarfing or espaliering them so that it looks like an experimental farm.
Granted some of the trees are actually on our neighbor's property (with their blessing), but still.
Other kinds of fruit have higher sugar content; jujube is reportedly highest, reaching thirties or even forties. For a strawberry 13-14 is quite good, though. Here's a sophisticated amateur who managed to hit 14.5 (with lower average):
https://old.reddit.com/r/Hydroponics/comments/t8wx66/strawbe...
Also that price is for "11 medium berries or eight large berries", and has now dropped to $20. That's still a bit ridiculous, though it's not clear to me what fraction of their harvest is actually saleable at the high price.
Actually at $20 for 8 - 11 berries, that's not a bad deal -- but only if they're actually exceptional quality.
Good luck with your strawberry tree
Parent was suggesting that for sugar-per-unit-of-land, a tree will bear larger volumes. I'd observe it will take less effort to maintain, be much more resilient to drought and pests, and have several other benefits, and it's why permaculturists prefer trees to annuals.
While I suspect you're being snarky about strawberries not being trees, there actually is a strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. I'm growing one, as it happens. They're a good looking tree, dark leaves, good canopy, lovely white bell-shaped flowers, but the fruit being reminiscent of strawberries more in the visuals than the flavour. This species appears on Madrid's coat of arms.
I was curious about this so call "strawberry" tree, the Arbutus unedo has nothing to do with strawberries. The fruits are delicious but if someone is expecting a strawberry, they will be highly disappointed.
Being prepared for disappointment is perpetually sage advice to the young.
Lots of things don't taste as you'd expect from their names -- monkfish is the first that springs to mind. I mean, sure, they're fish-flavoured, but ...
Mangosteens (my favourite fruit) are not at all like mangoes, kiwifruit taste more like a gooseberry than a chicken, dragonfruits are pleasantly delicate but way more bland than the fiery name suggests, and so on.
If you don't like the surprise of the fruit from strawberry tree not tasting like a strawberry, then the tree tomato (tamarillo) will really annoy you. : )
Kiwifruit is also known as Chinese gooseberry, so not surprising.
I did not choose that word at random. : )
I learned about them a few years ago when a bought a house and was trying to identify the plants in the yard. Prior to that I had seen them in San Francisco and wondered if they were edible.
I snack on the fruits when ripe, but haven’t made anything out of them yet. Hummingbirds seem to love them and they’re evergreen, so they’re nice to have around aside from them fruit.
That's a fascinating tidbit about the tree. So the fruit is edible, just not delicious? I suppose it could theoretically be bred to produce a more sweet variety of fruit?
Louis Glowinski, a Melbourne resident, published a spectacular book about growing fruit in Australia back in 2008 [1] -- it's a marvellous read, especially for the domestic geographical references, as well as the proper alignment of months to seasons (obviously most other works are from the northern hemisphere, and the prevalence of things like 'pick these in late July' which need to be mentally rot-6'd, gets tiring real fast).
Anyway, there's a couple of probably unintended running jokes in that book -- the phrases 'highly variable' and 'good for jams' are frequently used when it feels like he's trying to be polite about good, but often far from great, fruit.
I recall he used both phrases for this species.
I think with a lot of these kinds of fruit trees that haven't been carefully selected over centuries, you don't have lots of named varieties, and consequently they're usually grown from seed rather than grafted, so in turn, combined with climate and soil variations, it's a bit of a pot-luck on whether you have great, or merely edible, fruit.
So, yes, you're right, we could start breeding better varieties, but this is an expensive pursuit for tree crops, and few are engaged in it these days.
Apples get a bit of attention (look at the Cosmic Crisp f.e.) and citrus too, but realistically most of humanity's diet today is based around species selected by hunter-gatherers ~11k years ago.
[1] https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-complete-book-of-fruit-grow...