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The first day of fall was Thursday, September 22. While the strawberry plants are showing more colors in their leaves, the berries are still coming in strong. The weather has been great for providing large consistent fruit sizes and excellent flavor! The marketing staff is also reminding consumers that berry season is still underway and will stretch through the fall season, well into December, weather permitting. So, be sure to maintain display space and offer a variety of berries along with your new fall items, providing new colors and options in the produce department. Speaking of colors, we are still having fun with our ‘Berries for President’ campaign featured below and look forward to keeping an eye on berry election results!
For more information, including crop and weather reports, please scroll below.
Santa Maria: We have had sun and heat, some wind, and some fog on and off over the past week or so. The forecast is for 80’s the beginning of this week cooling by week's end to the mid 70’s. Our night time lows are still in the 50’s, keeping us in some mild Indian summer conditions. Long range forecast is ‘maybe’ some rain by mid-October. Strawberry quality is still very good, with a range in sizing based on field location and planting dates, with sizes either 18-20 or some packs at 24 count. Our fall crop is coming into peak production, showing promotable volume for the next several weeks. There is some fruit bruising, which our QA team is focused on addressing daily to ensure consistent quality in the pack. We are also seeing very good quality on blackberries, as the volume continues for the next couple of weeks in this region. This district is not having any labor issues at this point, so harvest rotation is on schedule.
Watsonville/Salinas: Very similar weather conditions to what we are seeing in Santa Maria. Coming off a hot weekend (90’s in some areas), we expect a cool down by mid to late week in the 70’s and are also seeing night time temps in the 50’s. Quality and size is still very good for this time of the year, due to the foggy conditions we had earlier in the month and in August. There is still a lot of bloom and young fruit on the plants with plenty of volume still to come well into October. We are also expecting very good quality on blackberries and raspberries in October with the shorter days potentially decreasing volume in late October.
Blueberry forecast: As you can see from these photos taken last week in Argentina, the plants are loaded with fruit. We are just waiting for weather to cooperate and increase volume harvested. For the last two weeks, weather has been cold - both daytime and nighttime temps. The forecast is showing a positive shift this week. Fruit arrivals from this region show excellent quality and very promising for the season ahead. We expect volume to increase rapidly this week and next week as weather shifts with promotable volume from Argentina, Uruguay and Peru.
For up-to-date weather conditions in all of our growing regions, click on the region below. Wunderground.com is our go-to weather resource for fast and reliable weather updates.
We are pleased to be co-hosting a party at the PMA Fresh Summit on October 15 at THE PUB. We hope you will join us, so be sure to RSVP once you receive the invitation, or let us know in the office!
As a reward to our favorite shoppers (and yours!), we are currently offering cents off to shoppers purchasing California Giant strawberries and blueberries to support the fun we are having with our Red State or Blue State Promotion. During the campaign, shoppers have the opportunity to get instant rebates through the Ibotta mobile APP to receive $.25 off their strawberry or blueberry purchase. To date, we have had over 92,776 entries in our berry election sweepstakes and we are anxiously watching the votes continue to come in for either red or blue…berries. Please be sure to stay tuned in and visit us at PMA to cast your vote and see who is ahead in the polls!
Last fall we had some scary strawberry ideas for Halloween celebrations and they were such a hit, we came back for more this year! Our Scary Berries are already appearing on social media and we will be featuring an e-book full of crazy scary ways to include fresh strawberries, blueberries and blackberries in Halloween themed events for both kids and adults. Here is a sneak peek into some of our edible creations!
Scary Berry Spider Web Cookies
Scary Berry Stuffed Jack O' Lantern
