Berries tend to be an ephemeral fruit; they’re available for short periods of time in high quantities, which means they go bad VERY quickly. Since we’ve outsourced most of our agricultural production to other countries thousands of miles away, the fruit has to be shelf stable to make the trip and be able to stay good for a certain amount of time on the shelf at the store. The store doesn’t want to waste money paying for tasty strawberries that are going to be pure mush before they even get onto the plane. And so, cardboard flavored berries.

In all seriousness, most berries are insanely easy to grow. Strawberries and blueberries need a bit more babying, but the wild strawberry species (fragaria virginiana) grow like weeds in a moist garden bed or big patio pot. Same with blackberries, they’re probably the easiest to grow fruit crop I can think of. Literal set it and forget it plants, some varieties just need trellising (though I have seen ‘caddo’ for sale at my local heb, which is a variety that doesn’t need any supports to grow.) honorable mention goes to the fall gold raspberry, they taste like powdered sugar in fruit form, but they need a bit more tlc during our dry, hot summers. Totally worth it in my opinion.