Crop Report: April 20th, 2023
Tomatoes
Organics – Planting completed! Plants are growing nicely. A fortunate and pleasant week of warm weather which is helping with the growth of our newly placed transplants. We are now estimating a delayed, first harvest and processing date for organic tomatoes of Monday – July 24th.
Pear Tomatoes – Transplanting continues and going well. Conditions are improving except for strong winds during the day.
Conventional Tomatoes – Transplanting continues, with a new grower starting every day this week. As April 20th, PCP has approximately 15% of our tomato crop now in the ground. Our late planting start looks to have pushed our first estimated tomato harvest and processing date back to July 31st – August 2nd. Worries persist in the California Tomato Processing industry that our significantly late planting efforts, due to frequent rain events will push us into the more precarious and yield challenged fall month of October. For this reason, we caution our customer to make their commitments to Pacific Coast Producers as soon and as meaningful as possible. Every good quality tomato ton we get to harvest and process for our customers this summer will be a blessing.
Peaches
Modesto/Madera/Kingsburg – New plantings continue to go into the ground as the weather has improved. Peaches have finally pushed out of their jackets. The Carson and Klamath variety are still experiencing some petal fall with the tops of the trees just now pushing through their jackets. The Calaveras seem to have some light spots. There is some possible mixed maturity starting to show up, but we need some more warm weather to speed up the natural sloughing period. Crop potential continues to look good. Growers are busy tying and mowing orchards. Integrated Pest Management programs will continue by monitoring orchards
for pest populations as fruit develops.
Organic – In the Kingsburg area the American variety is showing considerable frost damage. Most of the peaches have sloughed off leaving a very light crop. Right now, the rest of the varieties continue to look good, but we will know more in a couple of weeks. In Madera the Vilmos are showing some signs of frost damage with some flowers drying and falling off the tree but given the heavy set there is still a lot of fruit on the trees. All other varieties have pushed out of their jackets and look good. The Klamath are a little behind with some trees still in petal fall. They started mowing and will go back and disk after the grass is mowed down.
Marysville/Yuba City – Colder than normal temperatures have led to slow fruit growth and early blooming varieties have only about 60% of their jackets shed. The northern wind is helping to dry out jackets on all
varieties. Growers continue to mow orchards as spring grasses begin to grow. The north has received 12.37 inches of rainfall January 1st March 31st of this year. Compared to last year’s 0.93 for the same period. The
crop potential continues to look promising. However, natural drop has yet to take place.
Pears
River and Linden – Full bloom was called on April 10th. This is 2 weeks later than normal. In 2021 it was March 27th and in 2022 it was on March 21st. The bloom was uniform throughout individual orchards.
Petal fall can now be seen throughout the river.
Mendocino and Lake – Mendocino growers noted the bloom moved drastically from the weekend to the beginning of the week. They finally received some warmer weather. Mornings have been in the low 30’s but
they have reached high 60’s in the afternoons. At this point they feel they are at 80-100% of full bloom. The Lake growers are farther behind. They are less than 50% bloom.
Grapes
Growers have begun irrigating. Bunch counts are expected anytime in the Bakersfield/Earlimart area. The Madera area is well into bud break and should have bunch counts in a week or two. Cultural practices including the application of crop protection materials continue in all areas.
Cherries
PNW crop development is 2-3 weeks behind last year. Forecast indicates the bloom timing will be pushed out for more days. The good news is the delayed bloom will hopefully shorten frost season. Growers are continuing their cultural practices. Bees are being placed in the orchards in anticipation of a big bloom.
Apricots
Recent warmer temperatures have helped move this crop along. We still
look to be about 10 to 14 days behind. Hail damage can still be seen in
almost all orchards but does not appear as bad as the fruits mature. Some
growers have begun to thin their orchards and irrigations and all other
cultural practices continue.