Crop Report: July 13th, 2020
Tomatoes
Conventionals – Early, mid, and late season plantings are all looking good and maturing nicely. Harvest should begin at the end of the month.
San Marzano Style– The crop is maturing nicely and plants continue to look healthy. Harvest is expected to begin at the end of the month.
Organics – The crop continues to progress as anticipated and harvest began Sunday, July 12th.
Peaches
Organics – Harvest began on June 3rd. Crop continues to look good as we move through different varieties. Normal cultural practices and irrigation continue as needed.
Conventionals – Harvest began on June 24th. Growers are struggling to retain adequate manpower to harvest this year’s peach crop. This difficulty lies in not only keeping enough healthy workers on the job at hand, but also in maintaining a sufficient number of acclimated harvest laborers. The inactivity put upon our population of peach harvest workers brought upon them by 3 months of COVID-19 precautions and isolation measures, combined with the high heat of Northern California summers, has made the task of day long peach picking much more strenuous by comparison to past years than usual, culminating in a workforce that has been initially less effective in terms of bins and trees picked per day, per field worker.
Pears
The Pear Advisory Board held their annual Pear Punch to test fruit for pressure and sugar to determine if they are ready for harvest. All PCP growers who brought in samples passed. We expect to begin receiving fruit the week of July 20th. Mendocino and Lake district crop appears to be average or above average in size. Growers continue to irrigate as extreme temperatures continue. Normal cultural practices and crop protection continue.
Grapes
Grapes are growing well. Additional irrigation applied as needed due to the extreme heat. Normal cultural practices and crop protection continue.
Cherries
We are well into the second half of harvest. We continue to anticipate harvest go well into August.
Apricots
Apricot harvest was completed on June 25th. Actual tonnage received was significantly less than anticipated. Stress from the full tonnage harvest and premium quality of 2019, unfortunately led to a lighter yield in this year’s crop. Apricots (like avocados) tend to yield excellent quantities every other year. Other contributing factors include lack of adequate winter rainfall and less than ideal chilling hours by 40%.