Author Archive
I have just returned from Florida and over the weekend had the opportunity 
to attend the Florida Strawberry Festival at Plant City, FL, just east of Tampa. Before talking about the event, here’s the bottom line on Florida strawberry shipments. Volume is good from the area, with over 400 truckloads being shipped weekly. However, if the warm, humid weather continues shipments will start rapidly declining, which is pretty normal for the last half of March.
Strawberries grossing about $1,000 to Atlanta.
The Florida Strawberry Festival has been held since 1930 and is quite similar to a state fair with everything from midway rides to a queen contest and awards for cake decorating, plus plenty of entertainment, among countless other activities.
I caught the show by the pop group Air Supply on Saturday night (March 3). I’m told they had several big hits during the 1980s, but I guess I missed them somehow. Anyway, wasn’t my flavor of music, but they did have a great band!
If you’re looking for something to do and in the area, it can be a fun event, which lasts through March 11th. By the way, lots of huge, beautiful flats of strawberries are being sold at the festival for $7 and $8.
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is
pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the USDA, asks us to “Please Do Not Feed the Animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
By Larry Oscar
Now that Spring has nearly arrived, I can’t help but notice the abundance of weeds this year. For years I have marveled at how they just seem to pop up everywhere. Weeds can grow in just about anyplace. And to make it even more of a wonder, they seem to thrive in places that you couldn’t get any plant to grow if you wanted.
You can buy plants and place them where you think they will thrive and two weeks later you look to find them dead. Not so with weeds, they can appear in cracks in rocks and grow to magnificent specimens of horticultural bliss. Then it occurred to me. The ever present battle with weeds is probably our own fault. If we tried to get them to grow, they would probably refuse to and just die off. The problem here is not that weeds are not vulnerable. The problem is that they know we don’t like or want them, and they have adopted a stubborn rebellious attitude. They are stubbornly going to survive just to show us how much smarter they are and get their own way. They have grown independent and resourceful.
I think weeds take great pride in their accomplishments. They make us spend
billions of dollars in herbicides. They must be having a big laugh alright. Gathering around the nation’s yards and gardens at night talking about how they managed to survive and defying us at every turn must give them a great sense of accomplishment.
I say we use some reverse psychology here. What if we really made an effort to nurture and support them. Why not open up some weed stores. If weeds knew that we were trying to propagate them the problem could go away. They would soon learn to be dependant on us for everything they want and need in life. They would not develop the survival skills to make it on their own and compete for food and water. They would have to depend on us for everything. Weeds would not show up and grow on their own, but rather sit around in greenhouses waiting for us to feed and plant them. They would not have a clue that what we are doing is bad for them. They would swallow the whole thing like a fish rising to the bait.
We will have developed the world’s first “lazy weed.” If we could do this, we could eliminate them from the planet.
Creating a cycle of dependency here is just the strategy we need. Nothing works quite as well for destroying a sense of personal accomplishment and personal pride than a good cycle of dependency. It’s bound to work wonders on weeds. We could even justify the whole process emotionally by claiming we are just trying to help the poor homeless weeds make it in a cruel and unforgiving world. A world that is running rampant with total disregard and lack of respect for weeds. That would make us feel better about what we are really doing.
I would be in favor of setting up the ACLWU to make sure that weeds don’t get their rights trampled on. After all, weeds should have rights too. We spend more time and money on trying to grow privileged plants than we do weeds. There is obviously a wealth gap here.
Yes sir, you can learn a lot from weeds. Maybe weeds are put here for a much greater purpose than we realize. Maybe they serve as a reminder of how individuality and diversity makes all of life a marvel. When you drive by a field in the early spring and look out to see the morning sun shining on the bright yellow-green colors, you would never know that the field was just a bunch of weeds. Each weed growing to be the best weed it can be. Each weed taking pride in its own individual accomplishments, and eventually trying something new that leads to innovation and changes in the species.
Weeds…you just gotta love’em. I just wish some of my friends would quit smoking so many of them.
The seasonal change in California shipping areas for vegetables will be here sooner than you think. In March shipments will start winding down from the 
desert areas such as the Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, as well as the Yuma district in Arizona. This can be a tricky time of the year, which can either result in shipping gaps as one area may finish before the other start. However, unless adverse weather changes things it should be a fairly smooth transition this spring.
As produce shipments move from the desert up north, there is actually a limited amount of broccoli being loaded from Salinas, CA. Broccoli volume is expected to be limited until the third or fourth week of March…..Head lettuce and leaf lettuce should start loadings in late March from Huron District in the San Joaquin Valley. These shipments will last a month or so before transitioning to the Salinas Valley around the third week of April.
The Santa Maria District typically starts lettuce shipments ahead of Salinas and Huron. Look for loadings of leaf, romaine and butter lettuce from Santa Maria to get underway in Mid March.
An exception to all this are carrots. This veggie is typically shipped from the Bakersfield area from Thanksgiving to mid-March. Then shipments will transistion southward to the desert areas of the Coachella and Imperial valleys.
Good news on the tomato front in retail supermarket stores. Another source 
is available for greenhouse grown tomatoes, which are the closest thing you’ll find to those tasty homegrown tomatoes we all crave during the summertime.
Grape tomatoes are now arriving in stores that are grown by Delta, British Columbia headquartered Winset Farms. However, look for the clamshell packages under the Green Giant label, with is the company marketing the product for the Canadian-based firm. The tomatoes are actually being grown in greenhouses in Santa Maria, CA.
Even better news is that by spring there will be beefsteak, roma and vine tomaotes made available to consumers.
Not sure how big the production is, so it will be interesting to see what retail chains are carrying the tomatoes.
As the seasonal light to moderate winter produce loadings continue, California 
remains your best bet. There’s items ranging from strawberries to avocados in Southern California. In the desert, mixed vegetables ranging from lettuce to cauliflower, broccoli and celery are being shipped. One cautionary note: Excessive supplies of vegetables have led to a glut in the market due in part because of a mild West Coast winter. If any weather event on the East Coast that ma occur, compounds the problem as receivers don’t want trucks stuck in snow, ice etc. with a load of perishable produce.
In the Gulf Coast area, there is Texas cabbage coming out of the Winter Garden District just south of San Antonio. Further south in the Lower Rio Grande Valley there is citrus and mixed veggies, plus crossings of numerous items from Mexico….In nearby Louisiana and Mississippi, sweet potatoes continue to be shipped….In the east, there are sweet potatoes loading from North Carolina. On some days there’s been a shortage of trucks in NC, but this may be in part due to sweet potatoes not being known to get a very good freight rate.
Light to moderate apple shipments are coming from the Applachian District of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Apples are being shipped from New York’s Hudson Valley, as well as central and western parts of the state….The new crop of red potatoes from South Florida are now being shipped.
California desert vegetables – grossing about $5400 to New York City.
Mississippi sweet potatos – $1700 to Detroit.
South Texas and Mexico produce – $2100 to Atlanta.
Central New York apples – $1600 to Baltimore.
Avocados should be one of the best buys in your local produce department as produce continues to arrive from Mexico and will continue to do so into May. 
There’s also Chilean avocados which will be on retail shelves into late March. California avocados also are available and will continue well after the imported fruit is no longer available — into September. Even when California has sole possession of the market, prices should remain reasonable. The state expects to produce as much as 415 million pounds of avocados this season, 25 percent more than a year ago.
During the last quarter of 2011 the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables actually declined overall by eight percent, but we may not have necessarily have seen the benefits in our retail stores. Why? A major reason is the cost of fuel keeps rising to get the product delivered.
That means you may not have noticed the savings, for example, with oranges which had an average price of 93 cents per pound in January, compared to 98 cents per pound in December. Another example are tomatoes, which were costing on average $1.54 per pound in January, down a penny from December, but off five cents from the same time a year ago.
According to the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy, U.S. diesel fuel prices are continuing upward.
Truckers are now paying on average $4.051 cents per gallon for diesel fuel, which is 24 cents more per gallon than at the start of the New Year. This is the highest fuel has been since the spring of 2011.
California, to no one’s surprise, has the highest diesel fuel prices, averaging $4.41 per gallon. This is higher than the average for the West Coast, riding at $4.326 per gallon. The average price on the East Coast is $4.134 per gallon. The mid-west has the “cheapest” diesel fuel, averaging $3.914 per gallon.
At this time a year ago, the national average price per gallon for diesel was 33.5 cents per gallon less.
We’re getting more information on how shipments may be affected from Georgia and Florida following a freeze from about a week ago.
In Georgia, it is becoming clearer the cold temperatures did significant damage to blueberries — perhaps as much as 50 percent of the crop. Hardest hit were the early Georgia berries, which typically start in late April and provide loadings through May….There will also be some losses of Vidalia sweet onions, but shipments are not expected to be significantly affected overall. Onion loadings should kick off in a small way around April 10-15 and move into good volume over the next two weeks.
In Florida, the cold front was not as serious, although initial predictions see blueberry shipments being cut by 20 percent for the season. Florida blueberries usually begin harvest in the southern and central parts of the state by late March, finishing in early May. The northern Florida blueberries typically are finished by the middle of May.
In general, the Southeastern freeze damage occured north of Interstate 4 and became progressively worse the further north you go.
Asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables! Right now there are good supplies 
of “grass” arriving in our local supermarkets from Mexico. Retails should even be offering special prices on it….There also is still some asparagus arriving from Peru, although volume is now seasonally down sigificantly.
Come the middle of March we should see asparagus grown in California starting to arrive in stores. This should mean even better prices for consumers since there is less expense with transportation than wilth product imported form other countries. However, there is currently of glut of asparagus which means the folks growing it are not making much. If this continues, there ars concerns some of the California farmers may disc under their crops if they’re not making enough to even harvest it.
Either way, asparagus should be a good buy in your store right on through Easter, which is April 8th.
I have just returned from Florida and over the weekend had the opportunity to attend the Florida Strawberry Festival at Plant City, FL, just east of Tampa. Before talking about the event, here’s the bottom line on Florida strawberry shipments. Volume is good from the area, with over 400 truckloads being shipped weekly. However, if the warm, humid weather continues shipments will start rapidly declining, which is pretty normal for the last half of March.
Strawberries grossing about $1,000 to Atlanta.
The Florida Strawberry Festival has been held since 1930 and is quite similar to a state fair with everything from midway rides to a queen contest and awards for cake decorating, plus plenty of entertainment, among countless other activities.
I caught the show by the pop group Air Supply on Saturday night (March 3). I’m told they had several big hits during the 1980s, but I guess I missed them somehow. Anyway, wasn’t my flavor of music, but they did have a great band!
If you’re looking for something to do and in the area, it can be a fun event, which lasts through March 11th. By the way, lots of huge, beautiful flats of strawberries are being sold at the festival for $7 and $8.
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is
pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the USDA, asks us to “Please Do Not Feed the Animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
By Larry Oscar
Now that Spring has nearly arrived, I can’t help but notice the abundance of weeds this year. For years I have marveled at how they just seem to pop up everywhere. Weeds can grow in just about anyplace. And to make it even more of a wonder, they seem to thrive in places that you couldn’t get any plant to grow if you wanted.
You can buy plants and place them where you think they will thrive and two weeks later you look to find them dead. Not so with weeds, they can appear in cracks in rocks and grow to magnificent specimens of horticultural bliss. Then it occurred to me. The ever present battle with weeds is probably our own fault. If we tried to get them to grow, they would probably refuse to and just die off. The problem here is not that weeds are not vulnerable. The problem is that they know we don’t like or want them, and they have adopted a stubborn rebellious attitude. They are stubbornly going to survive just to show us how much smarter they are and get their own way. They have grown independent and resourceful.
I think weeds take great pride in their accomplishments. They make us spend billions of dollars in herbicides. They must be having a big laugh alright. Gathering around the nation’s yards and gardens at night talking about how they managed to survive and defying us at every turn must give them a great sense of accomplishment.
I say we use some reverse psychology here. What if we really made an effort to nurture and support them. Why not open up some weed stores. If weeds knew that we were trying to propagate them the problem could go away. They would soon learn to be dependant on us for everything they want and need in life. They would not develop the survival skills to make it on their own and compete for food and water. They would have to depend on us for everything. Weeds would not show up and grow on their own, but rather sit around in greenhouses waiting for us to feed and plant them. They would not have a clue that what we are doing is bad for them. They would swallow the whole thing like a fish rising to the bait.
We will have developed the world’s first “lazy weed.” If we could do this, we could eliminate them from the planet.
Creating a cycle of dependency here is just the strategy we need. Nothing works quite as well for destroying a sense of personal accomplishment and personal pride than a good cycle of dependency. It’s bound to work wonders on weeds. We could even justify the whole process emotionally by claiming we are just trying to help the poor homeless weeds make it in a cruel and unforgiving world. A world that is running rampant with total disregard and lack of respect for weeds. That would make us feel better about what we are really doing.
I would be in favor of setting up the ACLWU to make sure that weeds don’t get their rights trampled on. After all, weeds should have rights too. We spend more time and money on trying to grow privileged plants than we do weeds. There is obviously a wealth gap here.
Yes sir, you can learn a lot from weeds. Maybe weeds are put here for a much greater purpose than we realize. Maybe they serve as a reminder of how individuality and diversity makes all of life a marvel. When you drive by a field in the early spring and look out to see the morning sun shining on the bright yellow-green colors, you would never know that the field was just a bunch of weeds. Each weed growing to be the best weed it can be. Each weed taking pride in its own individual accomplishments, and eventually trying something new that leads to innovation and changes in the species.
Weeds…you just gotta love’em. I just wish some of my friends would quit smoking so many of them.
The seasonal change in California shipping areas for vegetables will be here sooner than you think. In March shipments will start winding down from the desert areas such as the Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, as well as the Yuma district in Arizona. This can be a tricky time of the year, which can either result in shipping gaps as one area may finish before the other start. However, unless adverse weather changes things it should be a fairly smooth transition this spring.
As produce shipments move from the desert up north, there is actually a limited amount of broccoli being loaded from Salinas, CA. Broccoli volume is expected to be limited until the third or fourth week of March…..Head lettuce and leaf lettuce should start loadings in late March from Huron District in the San Joaquin Valley. These shipments will last a month or so before transitioning to the Salinas Valley around the third week of April.
The Santa Maria District typically starts lettuce shipments ahead of Salinas and Huron. Look for loadings of leaf, romaine and butter lettuce from Santa Maria to get underway in Mid March.
An exception to all this are carrots. This veggie is typically shipped from the Bakersfield area from Thanksgiving to mid-March. Then shipments will transistion southward to the desert areas of the Coachella and Imperial valleys.
Good news on the tomato front in retail supermarket stores. Another source is available for greenhouse grown tomatoes, which are the closest thing you’ll find to those tasty homegrown tomatoes we all crave during the summertime.
Grape tomatoes are now arriving in stores that are grown by Delta, British Columbia headquartered Winset Farms. However, look for the clamshell packages under the Green Giant label, with is the company marketing the product for the Canadian-based firm. The tomatoes are actually being grown in greenhouses in Santa Maria, CA.
Even better news is that by spring there will be beefsteak, roma and vine tomaotes made available to consumers.
Not sure how big the production is, so it will be interesting to see what retail chains are carrying the tomatoes.
As the seasonal light to moderate winter produce loadings continue, California remains your best bet. There’s items ranging from strawberries to avocados in Southern California. In the desert, mixed vegetables ranging from lettuce to cauliflower, broccoli and celery are being shipped. One cautionary note: Excessive supplies of vegetables have led to a glut in the market due in part because of a mild West Coast winter. If any weather event on the East Coast that ma occur, compounds the problem as receivers don’t want trucks stuck in snow, ice etc. with a load of perishable produce.
In the Gulf Coast area, there is Texas cabbage coming out of the Winter Garden District just south of San Antonio. Further south in the Lower Rio Grande Valley there is citrus and mixed veggies, plus crossings of numerous items from Mexico….In nearby Louisiana and Mississippi, sweet potatoes continue to be shipped….In the east, there are sweet potatoes loading from North Carolina. On some days there’s been a shortage of trucks in NC, but this may be in part due to sweet potatoes not being known to get a very good freight rate.
Light to moderate apple shipments are coming from the Applachian District of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Apples are being shipped from New York’s Hudson Valley, as well as central and western parts of the state….The new crop of red potatoes from South Florida are now being shipped.
California desert vegetables – grossing about $5400 to New York City.
Mississippi sweet potatos – $1700 to Detroit.
South Texas and Mexico produce – $2100 to Atlanta.
Central New York apples – $1600 to Baltimore.
Avocados should be one of the best buys in your local produce department as produce continues to arrive from Mexico and will continue to do so into May. There’s also Chilean avocados which will be on retail shelves into late March. California avocados also are available and will continue well after the imported fruit is no longer available — into September. Even when California has sole possession of the market, prices should remain reasonable. The state expects to produce as much as 415 million pounds of avocados this season, 25 percent more than a year ago.
During the last quarter of 2011 the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables actually declined overall by eight percent, but we may not have necessarily have seen the benefits in our retail stores. Why? A major reason is the cost of fuel keeps rising to get the product delivered.
That means you may not have noticed the savings, for example, with oranges which had an average price of 93 cents per pound in January, compared to 98 cents per pound in December. Another example are tomatoes, which were costing on average $1.54 per pound in January, down a penny from December, but off five cents from the same time a year ago.
According to the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy, U.S. diesel fuel prices are continuing upward.
Truckers are now paying on average $4.051 cents per gallon for diesel fuel, which is 24 cents more per gallon than at the start of the New Year. This is the highest fuel has been since the spring of 2011.
California, to no one’s surprise, has the highest diesel fuel prices, averaging $4.41 per gallon. This is higher than the average for the West Coast, riding at $4.326 per gallon. The average price on the East Coast is $4.134 per gallon. The mid-west has the “cheapest” diesel fuel, averaging $3.914 per gallon.
At this time a year ago, the national average price per gallon for diesel was 33.5 cents per gallon less.
We’re getting more information on how shipments may be affected from Georgia and Florida following a freeze from about a week ago.
In Georgia, it is becoming clearer the cold temperatures did significant damage to blueberries — perhaps as much as 50 percent of the crop. Hardest hit were the early Georgia berries, which typically start in late April and provide loadings through May….There will also be some losses of Vidalia sweet onions, but shipments are not expected to be significantly affected overall. Onion loadings should kick off in a small way around April 10-15 and move into good volume over the next two weeks.
In Florida, the cold front was not as serious, although initial predictions see blueberry shipments being cut by 20 percent for the season. Florida blueberries usually begin harvest in the southern and central parts of the state by late March, finishing in early May. The northern Florida blueberries typically are finished by the middle of May.
In general, the Southeastern freeze damage occured north of Interstate 4 and became progressively worse the further north you go.
Asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables! Right now there are good supplies of “grass” arriving in our local supermarkets from Mexico. Retails should even be offering special prices on it….There also is still some asparagus arriving from Peru, although volume is now seasonally down sigificantly.
Come the middle of March we should see asparagus grown in California starting to arrive in stores. This should mean even better prices for consumers since there is less expense with transportation than wilth product imported form other countries. However, there is currently of glut of asparagus which means the folks growing it are not making much. If this continues, there ars concerns some of the California farmers may disc under their crops if they’re not making enough to even harvest it.
Either way, asparagus should be a good buy in your store right on through Easter, which is April 8th.