The Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market opened on June 5, 2011; mere days away from the planned formal closing of the previous wholesale market located just a few blocks away. The previous market was an open dock building, much like many of the older terminal markets that still operate across the country today.

It is said that the PWPM is the most advanced cutting-edge fresh produce facility in the world. The many tours people from around the world take at the market are a sure signal that produce professionals are trying to learn from the best.

By the time the month of February is torn off the wall calendar, Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC has picked its first limited volume of conventional blueberries. “We start quite early, picking very sporadically as early as late February,” Marketing Coordinator Dovey Plain told The Produce News. “But in real terms, we get going in mid-April. May is our peak harvest period and then we’ll trail off through mid-June.”

The blueberry season is shaping up well for California Giant Berry Farms. “We have more acreage this year than last year and are expecting about a 15 percent increase in overall volume,” Director of Marketing Cindy Jewell told The Produce News.

The company is headquartered in Watsonville, CA, and markets blues to its global customers under the “California Giant Berry Farms” label.

While seed stem is problematic across the Vidalia onion growing region this year, John Shuman of Shuman Produce Inc. in Reidsville, GA, is optimistic that the area will still ship several million boxes of the popular sweet onion this summer.

While volume will be diminished, consumers are ready for Vidalia onion season. And even though Shuman has grown into a year-round supplier of sweet onions from multiple locations, Vidalia is where it all started.

“We are scheduled to start cabbage movement in Georgia on April 22,” Calvert Cullen, president of Northampton Growers, headquartered in Cheriton, VA, told The Produce News on April 16. “Cucumbers are scheduled to start around May 15, followed by peppers on May 25 and eggplant on the first of June.”

Mr. Cullen noted that the company was wrapping up the last week of cabbage movement in Florida in mid-April.

Nick Bozick, president of Richard Bagdasarian Inc. in Mecca, CA, said the company’s new solar panels are the first thing you might notice as you drive up to its packingshed.

The longtime Coachella Valley grape veteran said the company added the solar panels for a multitude of reasons. “In the first place, we believe it is the right thing to do to reduce our energy consumption,” he said. “Secondly we have been told that it will lower our costs and we were given multiple incentives from county, state and federal agencies that made it very attractive.”