14 New Fruit Varieties to Try

Savor sweet fig fruits with a trio of varieties hand-picked by growers. The varieties are heirloom types that are hard to come by in traditional market outlets. Use fruits to make jams, garnish salads or fill sandwiches.

Strawberry fans take notice—there’s a new berry on the block. ‘Flavorfest’ brings breeding breakthroughs in terms of high yields, big berries, excellent flavor and good disease resistance. This berry comes out of the USDA breeding program and is a replacement for ‘Chandler.’ It’s a mid-season (June bearing) strawberry with a long harvest season. Well-suited for Mid-Atlantic and Northeast gardeners.

Meet a blueberry bush that can easily pull double duty in the landscape as a hedge or walkway plant. Berries ripen in midsummer and offer an intensely sweet flavor similar to blueberry jelly. Leaves feature traditional blueberry coloring with red tints developing through summer into fall. Plants grow 1 to 2 feet tall and adapt easily to containers.

‘Tarpan’ strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) effortlessly combines beauty with function. Pink flowers fade to medium size berries that are juicy sweet. Expect to pick fruit all summer long. Plants adapt well to containers, but you can also grow them successfully in the ground, using the runners to form a productive berry patch.