Deardorff anticipates good production from late March on
Deardorff anticipates good production from late March on
Deardorff Family Farms in Oxnard, CA, which grows 120 acres of strawberries in the Oxnard area in addition to an assortment of vegetables, expects the strawberry harvest to be “rocking and rolling” by the third week of March, according to Doug Lowthorp, a salesman for the company.
The season got off to a good start, because there had been no adverse weather from early December through the end of February, Lowthorp said. “Everything has been fantastic” up until late February rains disrupted the harvest.
“We all know strawberries don’t like rain,” he said. “But we will sacrifice a little bit to help alleviate our drought. The rain was overdue.”
Doug LowthorpAlthough some fruit was lost due to the rain, the plants themselves benefitted, and “the ground needed to be leached of the salts” that had built up. The four to five inches of rain that fell seemed to do that job “and do it well,” he said.
Following the rain, “we’ve been stripping” rain-damaged fruit, Lowthorp said. “We are losing a week of production.” He expected the harvest to resume Friday, March 7. “We are not going to come back gangbusters, but we will start with a fair amount of volume,” and by the following week, “we should be going pretty good.”
From a marketing standpoint, “to be perfectly honest this rain event was probably good,” he said. “The timing couldn’t have been better.” Florida has been “going heavy” with its strawberry harvest, and in markets across much of the United States, there has been “a winter that won’t end.” However, he expected the weather back east to improve soon and Florida to be “out of the picture” shortly, providing good market opportunities for California berries as volume starts to build.
