Presented by Driscoll’s
PHOTO COURTESY OF DRISCOLL’S
Consider the perfectly ripe little berry. In addition to being completely irresistible, but how much do we know about how this delicious little summer fruit?
In the 100+ years of growing perfect berries, Driscoll’s has learned just about everything there is to know about how to get perfect into that little clamshell. Bone up on your berry trivia with these five fun facts about Driscoll’s berries:
- Not only are Driscoll’s berries patent protected, but Driscoll’s is the only berry company that actually has their own research and development team dedicated to fully understanding what consumers want in a berry. It takes five to seven years to produce a berry variety that is ready for commercial production.
- Did you know? Blackberries and raspberries are aggregate fruits. This means that each of those little drupelets on the berries is actually an individual fruit (similar to a cluster of grapes). Also, the number of drupelets that comprise of the berry is equal to the number of times a bee landed on the berry flower to pollinate it.
- A typical strawberry contains 200 seeds! A strawberry plant can reproduce 2 different ways – either replanting the seeds, or the plant will shoot out runners and clone itself into multiple plants with the same DNA.
- Matching berries for natural cross-pollination is a very big process. In any given year, Driscoll’s chooses the best plants and makes about 700 crosses. Each cross results in anywhere from 40 to nearly 300 seedlings. That means that in a single year, Driscoll’s has over 100,000 seedlings that could potentially become a new variety of berry that makes it to your supermarket.
- One of the things that growers at Driscoll’s do to keep plants healthy is to use “cover crops.” This means rotating berry fields with other plants from season to season. Cover crops are part of how you manage soil between seasons. This helps prevent disease and encourages soil health and soil structure. You might be surprised to learn that broccoli is a really good crop to rotate with between seasons!
This post is presented by Driscoll’s
