I received the Scopattizo San Luigi from a farmer in Italy named Fabio in late 2021/Early 2022 and planted them in the spring. Unfortunately, I unknowingly planted the seedlings into poor soil and then transferred them into the raised beds from there. In addition, I was forced to put cardboard over the area due to cats that felt the desire to use the planter beds as a litterbox.
Despite the poor soil and cardboard, the plants did alright for the first 2 weeks, but dawdled for some time after. Despite adding lots of worm castings, the vines took a long while to establish themselves.
By the time they established the San Luigi began setting fruit, I had to start covering them with netting to keep them from crossing with a nearby Carosello Barese crop. From that point until the end of the crop, I coved the bed with netting. This was both good and bad. On a positive note, it enabled the plants to remain pure. On a less positive note, the netting significant increased the damage to the plants by a large population of woodlice.
My experience with the Scopattizo San Luigi was generally positive. It is a delicious carosello variety. While I am not as much of a fan of it as some of my Italian friends, I believe it to be one of the better carosello varieties in taste, water content, sweetness and texture. My friend Giuseppe said that it performed much better in his plot than the Barattiere, which had a very abysmal performance – especially compared to the Barattiere fruit that he was accustomed to consuming down in Puglia.
