While the Well•Pict trade show crew is in its own backyard for the Organic Produce Summit, summer is in full swing — and so is the company's strawberry production.

As a family business, Frieda’s doesn’t play favorites. However, it’s hard to hide the excitement for passion fruit, named flavor of the year for 2022 by Food and Beverage flavor house Monin.

Passion fruit is considered to be the largest berry of all berry-producing plants. An excellent communicator of ripeness, the passion fruit's thick purple skin wrinkles when ripe. Under its expressive exterior are small, black, crunchy, edible seeds surrounded by a brightly colored pulp with a sweet and tart tropical flavor.

New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher highlighted the beginning of blueberry season in the Garden State with a visit to Macrie Brothers Blueberry Farm. Secretary Fisher and state and local officials viewed the packing of Jersey Fresh blueberries to emphasize that locally grown produce and farm products are readily available now at farmers markets and stores around the state.

It’s a bountiful summer of blueberries for California Giant Berry Farms, as the company forecasts giant volumes of blues ahead. The grower’s high yields and exceptional quality continue as consumer demand for blueberries remains firmly in place.

New Jersey should see about the same or perhaps just slightly lower volume of blueberries as last year, according to Art Galletta, president of Atlantic Blueberry Co., headquartered in Hammonton, NJ.

Recent weather in southern New Jersey has been pretty good for blueberries, according to Thomas Consalo, president of Sonny Boy Produce in Vineland, NJ.