New Pragor Coop avocados are in

There’s lots of fruit news today: Kiwi Berries are now in full harvest mode – expect these to become a year-round item soon. With so many rampant diseases affecting the larger Hayward (fuzzy) variety affecting producers in Chile and N.Z., growers there are switching hundreds of acres to this smaller traditional variety. Kids love these little grape sized kiwis – all the flavour, but no yucky skin! We were hoping we had overcome our Peru banana supply issues but we’ve had a container at port for 5 days while CBS takes their time looking for whatever they think they’ll find, like the 100 other containers we’ve had inspected, that didn’t have anything in them except bananas. So….Expect some shorts on the weekend. But after this, no problems as we continue to ramp up supply. Our Pragor avocados are amazing. Don’t forget the great deal we have going on 84 ct lugs – those are the same size as our normal 24 ct packout. The last California mango harvests are about done, and as usual, all the fruit is huge. Don’t be afraid – mango lovers will pay the price for these beauties, and when they are done in a couple of weeks, we will have the usual gap on organic before Ecuador fruit arrives. The pear selection continues to astound, with several new listings from Washington and the first of the B.C. Asian Pears and Bosc. Our CAPA pineapples are beautiful. These are the MD2 variety that are supersweet, and look fresh-cut for a long time. Enjoy these! We’re still receiving the last harvests of B.C. late plums. Italian’s are harvested 3-4 times as they don’t ripen evenly. Empress plums also will impress; these are the very very last BC plum to come off the trees. Asparagus is beautiful. This is going to be a nearly year-round category soon, with new production areas and techniques. This Argentina product is stunning, which will transition to Peru in a month. We’ve been selling Josie’s brand broccoli for months, and the quality just continues to impress the heck out of us. We should have an excellent bunch carrot program from multiple Washington growers for some time – until a few hard frosts hit the tops. We’re into the first of Joe Siri’s Cauliflower – this has always proven to be top quality product. Thanks for all your support on that huge run of Cliffe Farm celery – we are still amazed how much we sold, so we’re back to suffering the high prices from the limited California supply. With the last of the B.C. cukes expected to be gone in the next day or two, we’re back to Francisco Tepia’s (Rico) beautiful product – but prices will stay high until more people are in the game. Our first cukes from Ejido LDR will arrive late next week. Speaking of cukes, Thorp Farm is expecting solid supply of HH Long English cukes out of the Okanagan for many weeks to come aside from the windstorm that hampered production this week by damaging a couple of them. Local growers did a great job fighting weather to the very end, including protecting crops, so we still have some supply of B.C. eggplants, peppers and slicer tomatoes. Gene Covert is growing his Romas under cover – so we’ll have these for another week.