MARKET REPORT - JUNE 18TH, 2016

What a excellent grape season!Well, as they say, hindsight is 20-20.  A few months ago we decided to not buy Gala apples from the Fern Ridge growers we had worked with for many years – they were asking very high prices, based on the conversion of NZ to US to CDN $, and we were told that there would be ample supply from Chile and Argentina.  Well, aren’t we kicking ourselves now, because the price they were offering was lower than what we are now paying from S. America, partly because of the much higher CDN$ compared to 4 months ago, and there is a global shortage of Gala’s right now.  Hence the shortage of Gala’s on our list today. Despite some great downpours over the last few days in the Lower Mainland, caused minor flooding in some areas – but they were patchy, and some areas were left dry, including a couple of our local organic blueberry growers, so we have lots of bulk berries in stock, and lots more coming tomorrow.  With rain in the forecast for the middle of the weekend, there will be a rush to pick Friday and Saturday before the next patch of rain hits us.  If you follow the news, there was measurable snow on the ground in higher parts of Vancouver a couple of days ago – so we got to experience some true Calgary-style spring days for the first time ever here on the Wet Coast.What a excellent grape season!  A plethora of listings including our two fave specialties – Black Sapphire and Green Cotton Candy.  We have been blessed with increasing supply on both and we’ve put Cotton Candy on special this week.  Divine Flavor is done their very short grape season, so these will be our last until next year.  They shipped over 300,000 cartons – which is 6 million pounds in just over a month, much of that to Europe.  With temperatures in Sonora cresting 44C or higher, and higher last week it’s a good time to pull the plug on your season.Get geared up for BC Stone fruit season – we’re just 8-10 days away from local Cots and a trickle of early small BC Paul Friday (PF1) peaches as well.The California season is in full swing, with slow price reductions across all the cots and peaches.  Plums aren’t being priced aggressively with only 1/3 of the varieties in production still.We’re in the peak of strawberry season – June is the month in Watsonville, with excellent quality and prices hitting the mark.  Feel free to look at strawberry ads for the next few weeks.The list of BC veg continues to grow – even a smattering of broccoli crowns.  You may wonder why you rarely see BC Broccoli, Cauli and Celery listed.  Well, it is virtually impossible to produce broc and cauli in a large scale – they both require very consistent weather for one, and we have much more dramatic temperature swings than coastal California, where lows of 15C and highs of 25C are fairly common, where here it can range from 5C to 35C in a matter of a few days.  With broccoli especially, those swings can produce very small heads on very large stalks, or hollow heart – where the flower looks fine but has a very short shelf life, which is caused by too much rain.  Both these brassicas are also the target for aphids, which will always move to the most succulent crop in the field.  As for celery, it takes forever to grow – nearly 4 months, and during that time any number of weather events can damage it.Look for Walla Walla Onions later in the week – and you ask, what’s so special?  Well, I answer, sweet onions are salad onions – much less pungent but all the onion flavour.  Onions are phototropic – which means that they require a specific amount of light through their growing season.  So onion breeders sometimes just hit a perfect zone for a specific type of onions.  Walla Walla’s are from Washington.  They are seeded in the late fall and go dormant in the winter, and produce in the spring and early summer, which is a totally different cycle than storage onions which are seeded in the spring and harvested in the fall.  Vidalia is another sweet onion, but it only grows well in Georgia and other southern States where the light range during the growing season is different.  Leeks and garlic, like all alliums are also phytotropic, and growers use certain varieties that do well at their latitude.