New Fruit & Berry Varieties for 2020

What could be better than harvesting your own fresh fruit in its season, right off the tree, bush, or vine? Nothing beats scooping up a bowl full of ice cream on a summer evening, then heading out to the back yard to top it off with whatever is ripe and delicious on the spot. Unless maybe it’s picking a fresh peach for breakfast on your way out the door.

If you’re thinking of adding fruit and berry plants to your garden this year, early spring is the best time to make it happen. Not only is it when we have our best selection to choose from, but it’s also a great time to plant. The plants are still sleepy from their winter dormancy, which makes them more amenable to being transplanted, and the ground is still cool and damp but usually not frozen.

In addition to our usual abundant selection, we’ll have a few new varieties to choose from this year. From a raspberry that thrives in heavy soils to an apple that balances excellent flavor and even more impressive keeping qualities, we’d like to introduce you to this year’s fruit and berry debutantes.

Cosmic Crisp® Apple

Great flavor, amazing keeping quality

Does this much-lauded new apple variety — which has not one but two trademarked slogans to its name — live up to the hype? Only time will tell for sure, but the reviews sound pretty good so far. While it has some close competitors for the top of the flavor charts, it really shines in terms of disease resistance and keeping quality. And while some taste-testers still prefer its ancestor, ‘Honeycrisp,’ it tastes great too. It has been described as having an excellent balance of sweet and tart flavors that make it a great multi-purpose apple.

Red Cascade Apple

Uniquely beautiful and great for small spaces

This interesting variety will spark conversation every season of the year, while also providing abundant harvests in the fall. It looks like a weeping crab apple, with its gracefully cascading branches, but the fruit is full-sized and sweetly delicious. Hailing from Siberia, these trees are also extremely hardy.

White Gold Cherry

A gorgeous self-fertile jewel

Try this beautiful and self-fertile cherry for something you won’t find in every grocery store. It’s excellent disease resistance and resistance to cracking in wet weather are matched only by its sweet flavor and blushed golden beauty. It makes a great pollinator for other cherry varieties too.

Nanaimo peach

For Pacific Northwest success

Can you really grow peaches west of the Cascades? You bet. ‘Nanaimo’ is named for the town in British Columbia where it was developed, and its purpose in life is to thrive in cool and damp climates. Meanwhile, it’s a freestone variety that will easily relinquish its pit, it can self-pollinate, and it tastes great too.

Prairie Gem Persimmon

Beautiful and hardy, with seedless fruit

If you don’t have persimmon trees yet, maybe this year should be the year to add a couple. Native to North America, persimmons are some of the hardiest, most reliable, and most unique and interesting fruit trees around. The fruit of  this variety is small, sweet, and usually seedless. It can produce fruit without a pollinator, but will probably produce better with another persimmon variety around. Just make sure you let the fruit ripen until it’s as soft as a ripe tomato, since that’s when the flavor transforms from astringent to sweet.

Cascade Delight Raspberry

Perfect for damp and heavy soils

This vigorous, late-ripening new variety was developed at Washington State University specifically to handle heavier soils, which can give other raspberry varieties root rot. If you’ve struggled to grow fruit because of clay soils that hold on the moisture, this tasty variety might be the answer to your woes.

Cabrillo Strawberry

A new day-neutral variety with great disease resistance

Celebrated for the highest yields in its class, this new day-neutral variety also has excellent flavor. The fruit is about the same size as that of other popular day-neutral varieties like ‘Albion’ and ‘Seascape,’ but the texture is a bit firmer. This variety has moderate resistance to several common diseases, including powdery mildew and verticillium wilt.

We’re looking forward to another great fruit and berry season, full of both new varieties and old favorites. Don’t forget to check out our full fruit and berry lists to see everything we have to offer, and start dreaming of those long, sweet summer evenings full of home-grown fruit.