HAMMONTON, NJ — Every year around the end of May, longtime blueberry industry veteran Tim Wetherbee can’t wait to start the New Jersey blueberry season. The winter is long gone, the weather gets warm, and the berries are getting bigger on the bushes.

“This time of the year is just anxiety and speculation,” Wetherbee, sales manager at Diamond Blueberry Inc., told The Produce News Wednesday morning, May 27. “I wish I was picking today. When you get this close, you want to get going.”

Despite the long cold winter, Wetherbee was looking at “near normal” timing for the start of the 2015 New Jersey blueberry season. With warm weather throughout the month of May, “We’ve caught up the last few weeks, so winter wasn’t really a factor,” he said. The start date should be “somewhere about the 18th to 19th of June, and we’ll be in serious business by the week of the 21st,” he stated. “That works well for the July 4 ads.”

If the warm weather in May continues into June, Wetherbee even thought that some early-variety Weymouth blueberries might show up in mid-June. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see some Weymouth picked on June 15-16,” he said. “There’s not too many Weymouth left,” he noted. “It’s a good berry, but it doesn’t have the eye appeal of Duke and Bluecrop.”

Looking at volume statewide, Wetherbee predicted, “We’ll be every bit as good as last year.”

In 2014 the state produced about 55 million pounds of fresh blueberries, he said. “I think we’ll see that” in 2015. “We may get to 60 million pounds.”

As for his own company, which is the sales agent for Variety Farms and Bridge Avenue Farms, Wetherbee did not offer specific numbers for 2015 but did say, “I expect about the same as last year.”

As to quality, “So far the quality should be good,” he said. “We could use a little rain. But we continue to irrigate. The berries are sizing now. The bees were very active, so we think that pollination went pretty well.”

Wetherbee continues to keep an eye on the labor situation. “Labor is the other issue we’re concerned about,” he stated. “You never know until they show up if you’re going to have an adequate labor force. Anything can happen. Everybody has a cellphone nowadays, so if they get a more lucrative offer in a different area, they may not show up.”

But in preparation for good volume of high-quality Jersey blueberries, the blueberry industry is ready with a strong promotional program, as always. Advertising on radio and in trade publications similar to last year “are set in place,” said Wetherbee, who is chairman of the New Jersey Blueberry Industry Advisory Council. The radio spots, with a budget of about $36,000, will appear in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut and other parts of New England, mostly during drive-time hours, he noted.

“We’d love to get into the TV end of it,” but it’s very expensive, he added.

But as Wetherbee prepared for the start of the New Jersey blueberry season, “We’re watching what’s happening in other areas,” he said, referring to Georgia and North Carolina. “But so far, everything seems to be moving well.”