Produce update: June 19th 2015

We are getting close to the end of Washington apples and the selection will shrink to the scarce range produced in NZ and S. America.  Growers there tend to stay with apples with the longest possible storage ability, and those are mostly the five highest pressure, snappiest ones:  granny, Cripps pink, Fuji, red delicious and Braeburn, and the highest pressure varieties of gala.  We always aim for the royal or Tenroy varieties of gala, the top apple in NZ.   A surprisingly early start to BC stone fruit season with cherries and now cots available – we can hardly keep these in stock with fairly limited early harvests – same story with local berries with early harvests on the earliest variety.With new crop avocados just weeks from harvest, avocado pricing is starting to inch down as growers get prepared for a good harvest and high volumes of large fruit.On behalf of Hapag Lloyd, dock delays in Tacoma, a mal-functioning reefer unit, and two hurricanes disrupting sea lanes, we would like to apologize for our banana supply over the last 12 days.  We tried to cover most of our needs, partially successfully with fruit borrowed from wholesalers down the west coast.  The first of the delayed containers of cerro azul arrives tomorrow and we’re begging for delivery Monday, which will get us ripening fruit for Wednesday, all going well.Your attention please:  divine flavour has been working for over a decade on many new grape varieties in conjunction with a couple of universities.  Several of those have now made it to production trial stage.  Last summer when we were there visiting in Sonora, they let us try one of these – cotton candy – well, trust me, these will blow your socks off.  Supply is very limited – they promised us just one pallet.  It is first come first served, and then there will be no more until next year, but you just have to try these – if they are anything like what we sampled out of their staff lunchroom fridge you will be dumbstruck.Lemons are so hard to come by we should probably have a pickup truck down there spot-buying as they are harvested from each ranch.  Just the way it is.  Melon time!  The long range forecasts out of the states show temperatures up in the high 20’s and low 30’s for most of BC and southern Alberta creeping up later in the week – just a hint!The California Valencia crop is suffering – supply is tightening quickly and prices for nice looking fancy fruit are climbing quickly.  One grower’s rep said he is running out of fruit to sell already – for a season that normally winds down in October.  But thousands of acres of orchards have been cut and burned because there’s no water, and although we’ve been talking about the California drought for 2 years, we are now seeing more and more in-your-face examples of what the future holds – and this is one of those!  This time of year the end of the Mexican season usually gets diverted to their national market, but this year the world is different and the Sonora coop (citricos) continues to pack for export.A plethora of BC ground crops is emerging – some of these are just starting and in limited supply, but it’s still an awesome selection for June.  Unlike California product where we try to even out the pricing, you will see a wide variety of pricing on local greens.  You are all pretty clever and understand why.