Our Fruits

Our fruit season starts in late May with strawberries. It continues into early June with early rasberries and red and white currants.  Late June into early July brings black currants, more raspberries, gooseberries and cherries. 

Late July into early August, our peaches begin to ripen.  The Reliance and Sweet Sixteen peaches are early ripening varieties (late July-early August), and their taste can not be rivaled.  Reliance has floral and apricot overtones. Red Havens and Harrow's Beauty ripen in mid-August.  Our latest variety in late August is Bell of Georgia (a white fleshed peach that is juicy, sweet and outstanding in flavor).  Late July and August are also the season for blackberries. We have several varieties, all delicious. 

Late August through September beckons our apples and pears. 2011 was not a good year for our pears and apples, and we probably won't have any for sale in 2011. Several of our pear varieties have suffered severe outbreaks of fireblight (a bacterial disease) leading to significant tree loss in both 2010 and 2011. The Moonglow variety of pear seems to be fireblight resistant (thankfully!), so we might have a few pears available for sale in late August. Our apple fruit set was very poor and the fruit that is out there has significant insect damage (looks like our mating disruptors aren't working very well).

We manage our fruits organically which means incredible flavor but sometimes blemished fruits, particularly the tree fruits.  So, if you see some specks or white clay residues or maybe a whole from an insect, rest assured that these traits are not harmful to people.  They just mean that the fruits are so tasty that other creatures want to eat them as well as humans.

When we have fruit for sale, we sell our fruits at the Urbana Farmers' Market, Bloomington IL Farmers' Market (alternate Saturdays-check our blog), Chicago's Green City Market and Oak Park Farmers' Market on Saturdays (May-October).  We also offer u-pick. 

LATEST UPDATE on U-PICK SCHEDULE 2011

We may not have enough peaches OR blackberries available for U-Pick this year, much to our disappointment. If the situation changes, we'll post the updated information about days, hours and prices on this page of our website.

WE PROVIDE BUCKETS TO PICK WITH AND BAGS TO TAKE YOUR FRUIT HOME IN. PLEASE EMAIL IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS: prairiefruits@gmail.com