Wednesday, Oct. 19 is the date of this year’s Petal It Forward, the Society of American Florist’s international goodwill initiative, where on one day thousands of floral industry participants hand two flowers or bouquets to an unsuspecting stranger, urging them to keep one and share the other with someone else.

After a couple of false starts, the corpse flower at the University of California, Santa Cruz has delivered what many were waiting for, on Aug. 2.

It fully bloomed with the overwhelming stinkiness that it got its name from. The Central Coast does not have a tropical climate, the corpse flower is a tropical rainforest plant so, it waited until things heated up before it decided to bloom.

Henry Lee Giclas III, who retired two years ago after a career of unflinching devotion to the betterment of the produce industry, died on Friday, Aug. 5, after a short battle with cancer.

Mr. Giclas, who spent the entirety of his produce industry career with Western Growers, was born in Socorro, NM, in 1959 and retired in 2020 in nearby Albuquerque. In between, he lived an adventurous life that took him around the world and through several professions.

G&R Farms is a Peruvian sweet onion grower and has been growing in Peru for more than a decade.

Canada had some of the strictest protocols during the pandemic, which meant many restaurants were closed and foodservice business declined immensely. But the summer of 2022 paints a different story as things are starting to look almost normal again and business is back to pre-pandemic levels.

That’s good news for Fresh Taste Produce, which ships its produce to wholesalers, retailers, restaurants and foodservice customers throughout Canada and the United States.

As more and more points of origin increase their supplies of avocados to the United States, the marketing situation is being impacted like never before.