Like clockwork, it’s April, so the Salinas and Santa Maria valleys on California’s coast are the main suppliers of many of the nation’s vegetable row crops, including Iceberg lettuce, all the mixed and specialty lettuces, cauliflower, broccoli and celery.

“Huron has finished up, the desert is done — everybody is happy to get back to Santa Maria and Salinas,” said Denny Donovan, sales manager of Fresh Kist Produce LLC, which has offices in both Santa Maria and Salinas.

Donovan said the fewer production areas make it easier for both the shipper and the buyer as supplies are in one or two places with a lot of product typically being able to be loaded at one dock. It also makes for a better marketing situation. “Last month we had 32 lettuce shippers in the deal,” he said. “Now we are down to 17. That makes it much easier to establish a market. Communication is better and you have a better handle on what’s out there.”

Donovan said lettuce supplies are in good shape though they are ahead of schedule by about a week or 10 days so he expects a stronger market when a bit of a gap comes into play later in April. In mid-April, the market was a solid $10-11 for a 24-pound carton of Iceberg lettuce. He called the early yields in Salinas “phenomenal,” no doubt the result of the very mild winter that California has experienced.

Romaine and other lettuces were also in good supply with good demand and solid markets. On April 15, Greg Beach, vice president of sales for Steinbeck Country Produce Inc. in Salinas, CA, said that except for celery, which hadn’t begun its Salinas harvest yet, most of the crops were in good supply. “We have great quality and lots of product,” he said. “We are off to a great start. No news is good news as far we are concerned.”

Celery was still coming out of Oxnard with the Salinas harvest expected to begin during the week on April 20.

On that mid-April day, broccoli and cauliflower were the stars of any invoice as they were both in demand-exceeds-supply situations. Donovan told The Produce News he expected both vegetable items to stay that way until the end of April. “Cauliflower has been above $20 for a month and should stay that way for at least a couple of more weeks. Broccoli has been in the mid-teens and it is very easy to market it. The product coming from Mexico is not that good and all the desert guys are done. Just like cauliflower, we should have a good broccoli market for two more weeks.”

Bell peppers are one vegetable item that does not appear on the Salinas and Santa Maria sales sheets in April. At this time of year Bell peppers, including green and colored ones, come from Mexico and the Coachella Valley. On April 9, there was a very hot market with the U.S. Market News Service reporting green Bell peppers at $26-29. However, by Tuesday, April 14, there had been a market correction and the price was basically cut in half and hanging around the $13-15 range.

The approach of spring also has all of California’s strawberry districts in full production. Over the next two to three months California will be in its peak strawberry shipping period with 6 million to 7 million trays or more being shipped each week. Moving into this period demand has been very good creating a solid market in the $10-12 range. Market News noted a “steady market,” which is par for the course for strawberries. Typically the market starts high in the winter and slowly declines as volume increases. Eventually it reaches equilibrium, which appears to have happened.