Produce Update-April 22 2015

Stefan: A new load of Fairtrade Avocado arrived this week. These are later season crop so quite high in oil content. Origino is into strong production on all items with promotable volume on cucumber and tomato. Two EEs in Surrey is getting us a good shot of chards and dandelion this week. The sunshine and summery weather really has helped. Roots is gapping on rhubarb now for a little bit but we do have some nice Easter Egg radishes from them. These are assorted bunched with some mini white icicle and red and pink varieties in the bunches. We should see our first shot of stone fruit from Homegrown in California by the end of the weekend.  Peaches and Apricots!Annie: We’ve hit a few real gaps on some commodities, which although unusual, seems to be a little worse this year.  The problem usually hits crops that take a long time to grow.  Lettuce, chards and broccoli go from transplant to harvest in 60 days, cilantro and radishes much faster, but Cabbage, Celery and Cauliflower take 75 – 100 days.  With the desert growing areas done, we have to wait for the central California growing areas to get those later crops into production.  Right now, we’re seeing a gap on red cabbage.  Unlike Green Winter cabbage varieties, red cabbage doesn’t store well, so desert growers don’t want it hanging around.  There has also been issues this year for many growers in Central California with larger infestations of Bragata beetle and aphids.  Bragata’s are large and love brassicas – which include cabbage, cauli and many more and no one has found a good cure for this newest invasive species.  They are quite large – some growers have suggested they would have their best chances of getting rid of them with a shotgun.Red onion.  While growers in Washington store yellow onions right up to the last minute (and get very sharp prices at the end of the season), and dovetail right into the beginning of new crop production out of Imperial and Yuma, reds are a different story.  Red onions have a shorter storage life – 5 months instead of 6-7 for yellows, so Washington ends earlier on reds, and we nearly always see a gap before the new crop is ready out of the deserts.  Conventional red onions are always available because they can be treated with anti-mold agents for better storage.Celery.  A very long season crop, celery only grows in hot soil, and Salinas is always late to start.  This year has been tougher than usual, because the desert winter areas wound down faster than normal this year because it heated up a few weeks earlier than normal.  When we mean heat up, we mean too hot to grow much of anything except cotton.  This time of year, most major shippers are pulling celery from Mexico until Salinas crops mature.  Agrofresco who are in central Mexico, grows celery for us, but also for many large US companies as well, because they have such a different climate that is perfect for production during these gap periods.Melons. Heat loving crops, they are started in greenhouses, and cannot be transplanted to the fields until the soil temps are perfect. Once the last BC melons are done in the early fall, we don’t see more until coastal Mexican areas, including Baja are ready.  The primary area we draw from this time of year is the Sonoran desert, (where Grupo Alta is) and they start later because it freezes in that area in mid-winter.  This year was a tough one, because Baja and coastal regions were hit by 4 hurricanes a few months ago, which destroyed a lot of transplants (and shade houses.) That’s why supply was limited for the last few months, but now all northern Mexican areas in full swing.We have expectations that there will always be supply of every crop, from some region or another, especially when we see conventional fruit at supermarkets that isn’t available organically.  Right now you might see peaches from Mexico, grapes from Chile etc., but not on our lists.  This is because of pests that could affect local stone fruit or grape production – and those products are only allowed into Canada if they have been sprayed with methyl bromide.