FEATURED FRUIT: Oregold® Peaches
Incredibly sweet and juicy Oregold® Peaches are now shipping from our Harry & David Rogue Valley orchards. Our peaches thrive on sun-filled days and comfortably cool nights, and they are handpicked by our experts at just the right time and then carefully shipped to ensure they arrive in perfect condition. Ripe peaches will smell distinctively “peachy” when they are ready to eat.
These delicious peaches are wonderful when blended into fruit smoothies, mixed into homemade ice cream, or used to flavor sun tea and sangria. Add to the top of grilled entrées or pair with cheese and wine for delightfully sweet and savory combinations.
NOW HAPPENING IN THE ORCHARDS
Peach harvest has begun, and our famously delicious pears are currently ripening.
Harvest Information
We are now shipping Taylor’s Gold and Angélys pears grown in New Zealand. A Taylor’s Gold is a variety of Comice with a thicker skin which is golden rather than green. The Angélys is a cross between a Comice and a D’Hiver pear. It has the creamy texture, flavor, and juiciness of the Comice, but the D’Hiver parentage lets us harvest them a bit later in the season.
Cherries from Washington and British Columbia will ship in August.
Navel oranges from Chile and Peru will be shipping in August.
We are now shipping Jazz apples grown in New Zealand.
Orchard Facts
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Where do your Cherry-Oh!® Cherries come from?
We select growers in specific areas for our cherries—near lakes and cool river valleys—so the cherries are plump and extremely sweet. Those areas are Hood River in Oregon, Lake Wenatchee and Lake Chelan in Washington, and Okanagan Lake in British Columbia.
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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.
