CharlotteNC

Charlotte is a strawberry city. More farms within an hour pick strawberries than pick anything else, the fields open in the middle of April and they are finished by the end of May. Anyone who waits for warm weather has missed it, which is the single most useful thing to know before planning a trip here.

After that the region sorts itself by direction. The peaches are all south, over the South Carolina line around York and Chester, where the sandhills soil and the longer summer suit them. The apples are all west, up in the Brushy Mountain and Blue Ridge foothills at Morganton and Moravian Falls, high enough for the cold nights that redden the skin. In between, on the Piedmont clay either side of the state line, are the blueberries.

Almost every blueberry farm here grows rabbiteye, which is worth knowing because it behaves differently from the highbush grown in Michigan and Washington. It ripens later, holds on the bush longer, has a tougher skin, and tolerates heat that would kill a northern bush outright. Season runs mid-June to early August rather than the northern July.

September brings muscadines, and Charlotte is the second region on this site to have them. Ritchie Farm at Concord picks seven varieties from early September to about Halloween. Lineberger's at Dallas is the only farm here, and one of very few anywhere, that picks both figs and muscadines on the same ground.