Hothouse-grown cherries were available from California in commercial volumes for the first time this year, according to Jim Hanson, a salesman at Grower Direct LLC in Stockton, CA, exclusive sales agent for O-G Packing Co.

“We have completed the season now,” Mr. Hanson told The Produce News in late April. “We are currently harvesting [field grown] cherries“ out of districts from Arvin to Fresno. The company expected to continue shipping cherries through June, with production peaking out of the northern districts in California late May and June.

The earliest cherries out of the Arvin district generally start in late April. O-G Packing has been working to get an earlier start on the season with hothouse cherries, targeting early April for a start date, Mr. Hanson said.

“This is something that we have been doing for approximately eight years, and it has been a labor of love.” It has been basically eight years of trial and error and “a lot of research and development to figure out exactly what happens there and what needs to happen” to have a successful hothouse program for cherries in California.

“The last three years, we have had continuing success,” and “we are doing it in commercial scale now,” he said. “The plan is to expand the operation” in future seasons.

“Our goal is to be able to supply the market from early April through the time we start harvest” in Arvin, he said.

Varieties currently in the program are Brooks, Tulare, Rainier and several numbered varieties “that we are just experimenting with,” Mr. Hanson said.

A company in Spain has been growing cherries in greenhouses “for years,” he added. “They really pioneered the whole aspect of greenhouse cherries.” What O-G is doing is “not dissimilar practice to what they are doing in Spain,” but there are “a whole lot of factors” including weather that make a hothouse cherry operation different in California than in Spain, and “it is terribly expensive and terribly time-consuming” to figure out how to make it work.

Others have tried, he said. “I know other people in California have tried it, and it has been a dismal failure.” It is a viable concept only “if you can put everything in its proper order,” and that takes both know-how and commitment. “O-G Packing has been in the cherry business for three or four generations, and for them, with their knowledge of the cherry business to take the eight years it has in research to get this thing where it is” attests to the enormity of the challenge. “It is not easy. It is certainly not cheap. It is very expensive.”

But now, “the trade, especially the export market, is going to look to the future and say there is now an alternative to Spain” for early-season hothouse cherries, he said.