September - Pacific Coast Producers

Tomatoes

Organics – Harvest completed for the season.

Pear Tomatoes – Harvest continues and still going well. Fruit quality is holding up despite the little rain we received a week to ten days ago.

Conventional Tomatoes – Harvest is going strong. Fruit quality and field yields are holding steady. We are well into the mid-season plantings/crop. The late season plantings/crop are progressing very nice. Weather forecast for the next few days and into next week is calling for a slight cool down. Daytime temperatures are
expected to be anywhere from the high 70’s to the high 80’s. Then possibly in the low 90’s by the end of the week.

Peaches

Marysville/Yuba City – The Lilleland variety is currently 101 percent of the estimate. Lilleland’s will be finished on Saturday except for one grower who will finish on Labor Day. Starns and Sullivan #4 will be picked during the first week of September with the season ending by Friday the September 8th or Saturday the 9th.

Modesto/Madera/Kingsburg – The Lates continue to drag out with deliveries for Lilliland still trickling in. We are already 102% of our block-by-block estimate for Lates and should end up around 106% of estimate. The Extra Lates are coming in; we are picking Starns and Sullivans. We are about 60% done with the Extra Lates. The quality seems to be better apart from mixed maturity. We are trying to hold growers back to minimize the amount of immature fruit we are getting. We are anticipating the last day of harvest around August 9th.

Organics – Madera – We finished the organics this week. The Starns came in at only 82% of estimate. Quality was decent but starting to show some signs of brown rot from the recent rains. Overall we came in at 99% of estimate for organics.

Pears

River and Linden – Harvest is complete in both Districts.

Mendocino and Lake – Harvest is in full swing. Mendocino growers should finish harvest next week. Lake County fruit is still extremely small, averaging 20% under 2 ¼”. Fruit is starting to ripen. Growers need to wrap up harvest as soon as possible.

Pacific Northwest – Pear harvest is 98% complete. Both Yakima and Mid-Columbia areas had pink end
(mature pears) pears toward the end of harvest. We did not have any deliveries with high amounts but finished with some deliveries with 1-3% pink end. Pink end happens when temperatures before harvest are cool.

Grapes

Our second grower finished harvest this past week and came up 100 tons short. Just after harvest began, he felt strongly he had two to three hundred extra tons. The rain two weeks ago really had a negative impact on grape tonnage and quality in our southernmost vineyards. We have two growers still harvesting and they are in the Madera area. Luckily the rain was not as severe in this area, however rot was present in both vineyards from the beginning. Each day this season continues the rot gets worse. Both growers feel they have extra tonnage to get us to 7,900 tons, but with every grower to this point coming up short it looks like 7,700 is more realistic.