From the Fields - Greg Tesch

By Greg Tesch, Kern County farmer

We’re beginning lilac harvest. We’re one of the very few people in California that grow cut flowers anymore. We grow some in the southern valley near the Lamont area. We started 10 days later. There’ll be about a two-week season. Most of our lilac cut flowers end up in the grocery store distribution. Trader Joe’s is a heavy distributor of what we grow. The crop currently looks good, with no frost damage.

We’re about to start cherries this week. Ripening cherries cause rain, and that seems to be every year right when we’re about to start harvest. We see a little bitty rainstorm on the forecast. For me, the cherry crop looks early. For the rest of the industry, it’s slightly later. Cherries, in general, are late by around two weeks. Some are late by three weeks. I’m on the front end of the lateness. We picked April 18 last year, so we’ll be exactly two weeks late. Everyone else is most likely in the same category from where they started last year.

The very cold spring helped tremendously on the chilling, but it also delayed development of the fruit. We thought the crop, in general, was going to be light, but we actually have a variety that sets very well. It looks like the crop might have some periods of heaviness and lightness. We think that certain varieties might bunch up and have peaks and valleys as far as availability. We think the crop will be, in general, good, with some light periods and some heavy periods, depending on the varieties, through the California season.

Peaches appear to be a lighter than normal crop as far as the southern valley. It’s starting later by approximately two to three weeks.