Hood strawberries just might be the Portland area’s most famous food product other than Voodoo Doughnuts or Salt and Straw ice cream. But as any local strawberry lover will tell you, Hood season is sweet but painfully short—about ten days, according to Megan Hallstone, vice president of Columbia Farms on Sauvie Island. In fact, Hoods are already on their way out for 2026.
But if you haven’t gotten your hands on some Hoods, don’t despair. The Finnito strawberry, which has been in development for years but was only given its name this year, should start reaching peak ripeness in the next few days, extending the local u-pick strawberry season a couple weeks longer. Unlike Hoods, they’re large, bright red, and last for several days in the fridge. Some have described them as having a sweet, pineapple-like flavor. There are only a few places in the area to find Finnitos, including Columbia Farms and Hoffman Farms in Beaverton—but they’re already proving to be favorites of farmers and customers alike.
“Dare we say it… we’re starting to like Finnito even more than Hoods,” an Instagram post from Hoffman Farms reads.
Finnito strawberries take their name from their original breeder, Chad Finn, a USDA berry breeder who collaborated with Oregon State University. After Finn died unexpectedly in 2019, the strawberry sat in limbo in the berry breeding program, known only by a string of numbers and eventually dubbed “OSU Test Variety” by Columbia Farms. This year, USDA berry breeder Dr. Jenyne Loarca pushed Finn’s berry through the final paperwork stages of the breeding program, where it received its official name.
Columbia Farms first planted the strawberry now known as Finnito in 2020. “We frequently are in contact with various berry breeders, and they frequently ask, ‘Are you willing to plant a trial,’ which means you can plant these plants, and you can provide feedback, and the USDA or the berry breeder will come out and take notes,” Hallstone explains.
Finnito showed its true potential one particularly hot summer, when few strawberries survived the heat—except the test variety.
“The weather can be too wet and it still tastes good. The weather can be too dry and it still tastes good. So, in a changing climate, I think the Finnito is a real winner,” says Hallstone.
After discovering how special Finnito was—but knowing it was still stuck in limbo in the USDA’s breeding program—Columbia Farms urgently called a nursery that sold the rootstock for the test strawberry. Columbia Farms bought 30,000 of the nursery’s 50,000 plants; the remainder were sold the next day. Hoffman also says that the farm repeatedly contacted the USDA to request that the plant be pushed through the final paperwork process.
“We kept calling the berry breeder program at OSU/USDA, and kept saying, ‘Please do the paperwork for this, this berry is amazing. This needs to be in the market, people need to be able to plant this,’ and there was no one to push it through until Janyne was hired. So we are just forever thankful that Janyne made it a priority,” she says.
Now, Columbia Farms has a fan club of Finnito devotees who ask specifically about the strawberry.
“People will send me Instagram messages, and they’ll be like, ‘When is the OSU variety ready?’ It’s been fun to feel like we got to start something… we really marketed it to our customers, and they reacted so positively to it, and that has been so exciting,” says Hoffman.