Apricots in late August
This basket of large apricots was on sale yesterday at one of our major supermarkets in Rimouski.
I'd gone to this one, an IGA, especially to get "wild" blueberries from Lac St. Jean, which our neighbor had alerted us to - now available for a short few weeks. Wild blueberries (really a cultivated sort of thing at this point) are a major enterprise in this region across the St. Lawrence, but that's another post entirely.
These apricots puzzled me. They're from the U.S., packaged by a large fruit and vegetable packing firm based in Montreal. They puzzled me because it's the end of August. Normally, I see apricots from California in June in the Southeastern U.S.
What the heck were these, and where were they grown?
I didn't find definitive answers via my Google searches, but was surprised to learn that apricot breeding for late hardy varieties (for northern latitudes) has been robust in the western provinces and North central U.S. (Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.) for some time, not to mention also in Europe, where late-maturing varieties are prized, especially in France.
I'd gone to this one, an IGA, especially to get "wild" blueberries from Lac St. Jean, which our neighbor had alerted us to - now available for a short few weeks. Wild blueberries (really a cultivated sort of thing at this point) are a major enterprise in this region across the St. Lawrence, but that's another post entirely.
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| Really quite nice apricots for the end of August |
These apricots puzzled me. They're from the U.S., packaged by a large fruit and vegetable packing firm based in Montreal. They puzzled me because it's the end of August. Normally, I see apricots from California in June in the Southeastern U.S.
What the heck were these, and where were they grown?
I didn't find definitive answers via my Google searches, but was surprised to learn that apricot breeding for late hardy varieties (for northern latitudes) has been robust in the western provinces and North central U.S. (Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.) for some time, not to mention also in Europe, where late-maturing varieties are prized, especially in France.
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