Harvest Report | Fruit from Our Orchards

Feature Fruit: Strawberries

Just imagine biting into one of these sweet and juicy strawberries on a warm springtime day. There’s simply nothing else like it! Our strawberries smell and taste amazing because they’re ripened on the plant in the field. This gives them a richer taste than those found in a regular grocery store. Our berries are also hand-picked and extra-large—it easily takes three or four bites to finally reach the stem. Slice them up for a snack, toss them in a salad, or use them to dress up your desserts.

NOW HAPPENING IN THE ORCHARDS

With weather heating up, our orchards are full of life and the promise of sweet summer fruits. The peach trees have finished blooming and the young fruit is set. Every year we bring in hundreds of bee boxes and watch in amazement as the bees get right to work pollinating our pear trees.

Harvest Information

PEARS

While our Royal Riviera^® Pears are gone until fall, springtime brings other tasty pear varieties to get excited about. Throughout May we’ll ship Comice pears from Chile and New Zealand, as well as Angelys, Taylor’s Gold, and Packhams from New Zealand.

APPLES

This May we are shipping crisp and juicy Smitten and Pink Lady apples grown in New Zealand and Empire apples grown in New York.

CITRUS

Spring is in full swing and citrus is now at its peak season. This month we’re shipping citrus grown in California’s Central Valley. Selections will include late variety Navel oranges from California and Gold Nugget mandarins grown by Suntreat, one of California’s premier citrus growers.

SPECIALTY FRUITS

If you’re anything like us, you’ll spend the whole summer waiting for and dreaming about delicious, plump cherries. Our very first orders of red cherries will ship just in time for Labor Day delivery.

SPECIALTY VEGETABLES

Our featured vegetable this month is Shiitake mushrooms. If you’ve never tried them, now is the perfect time. They're full of savory, earthy flavor you’re sure to love. This month we’ll also ship green tomatoes from California and avocados from Mexico. Late in May, we’ll also ship white asparagus from Peru.

Orchard Facts

How do your orchardists ensure your pears are all ripe when they arrive, even when the weather is different from year to year?

Because pears require cold weather to become sweet, our orchardists pick each pear the moment it ripens, after which we place them in cold storage for up to 30 days. This ensures that every pear in your box will arrive within a day or two of being ready to eat.
How do you get great pears all year round?

We work with growers in multiple parts of the world to ensure that we have access to the right climate to grow top-quality Comice pears all year. Our orchardists fly out to Chile and New Zealand to inspect the pears we select, and we fly orchardists from those countries here to train them so they can provide pears that meet our standards.
When does your pear crop ripen?

Depending on the year, our pears can ripen anywhere from the second week of August to mid-September. The cooler the growing season is, the faster our pears ripen.
When does your peach crop ripen?

Our peaches ripen from the beginning of July into August while the weather’s warm. Unlike pears, peaches ripen faster in warm weather. If we get a cooler fall season, this means the peach crop and pear harvest will sometimes run together.
How do you make sure the best fruit gets into your gifts?

Every peach and pear (the two fruits we grow in our own orchards) is picked by hand sorted in the field. We then use a machine to take 17 pictures and sort them again to weed out imperfections, and finally, before packing, each piece of fruit is looked at one more time, by hand, to ensure only the highest-quality fruit is shipped.
How much fruit do you grow each year?

We grow about 400 tons of Oregold® Peaches, 15,500 tons of Royal Riviera® Pears, and 800 tons of Bosc pears. The total harvest varies based on weather conditions throughout the year.
Where do you grow your apples?

The majority of the apples we sell come from quality growers in Washington, since Washington apples are high quality and can be shipped everywhere in the U.S. From March to July, when apples aren’t in season there, we send our orchardists and merchants to New Zealand, which shares similar climate characteristics to the U.S. Pacific Northwest in many areas.
What’s a fun fact about a fruit that most people don’t know?

In order to turn orange, citrus fruit needs the cold. When temperatures are too warm at night, oranges, HoneyBells, and other fruit will stay green—even though they’re perfectly sweet and delicious. They just don’t take on that beautiful orange hue.