Harvest at HMC Farms is still going strong! Our late-season peaches continue to surprise us, with harvesttiming settling closer to normal after running well ahead for much of the summer. We expect to have California peaches with greatflavor and eating quality carrying us through the final weeks of the season. In the vineyards, table grape harvest is in full swing, with red, green, and black varieties offering excellent color, crunch, and flavor. As we move further into the month, our focus shifts to maintaining quality, managing maturity, and preparing for the possibility of early fall weather. With plenty of fruit…

It’s a great day for grapes! With harvest continuing ahead of schedule, now is a perfect time to showcase and enjoy grapes. There are multiple varieties available of red and green grapes, as well as our Solbrio black grapes. The season continues to be anywhere from three to four weeks ahead of schedule. The fruit is beautiful and delicious, and is the perfect end of summer treat to feature at your stores. It can also be featured on your menus or in your schools. Please reach out to your HMC Farms representative to set your grape ads today! The triple…

The wait is almost over! HMC Plumsicles™ are right around the corner. Start setting your ads now for our favorite fruit of the summer. Plumsicles are super sweet, with a little tang, creating a piece of fruit that isn’t just sugary, but packed full of flavor. The bright and fun packaging is a mere preview of the beautiful speckled exterior and deep red interior of this fruit. It feels like summer in more ways than one this May. As we near the start of June we will be packing almost all commodities of tree fruit, both conventional and organic. We…

The vines are growing rapidly in our California table grapes. This month we are shoot thinning more vineyards with more people as compared to April of 2025. Shoot thinning removes non-vital, new growth to help redirect nutrients to the portions of the vines where we would like to encourage growth. It is important to stay ahead of the work to be more efficient, the timing of shoot thinning and the other pre-harvest tasks are very important. Hopefully this slight cool down in weather allows us to get ahead even more so we aren’t chasing the crop/growth all Spring. Pictured below…

This month our peaches are out of their “jackets” — the protective shuck has split and fallen away — leaving the young fruit fully exposed during one of the most delicate stages of development. At this point, they are highly susceptible to weather-related damage, whether it’s hail, heavy rain, wind, or sudden temperature swings that are so common in the Valley this time of year. A single storm can scar or knock off fruit, directly impacting both quality and yield. To protect this vulnerable crop, we’ve invested heavily in hail netting, and on several ranches this year we’ve installed a…

Blossoms have begun to bloom in our earliest tree fruit varieties. Once bloom begins, we need warm days, to encourage bee flight for pollination. The more developed the blossom, the more susceptible it is to a freeze. In the semi-closed state (pictured below), the temperatures can reach below freezing and the flower will still be protected. Once the flower blooms fully, and juvenile fruit begins to form, the fruit is at its’ most susceptible stage. If the temperature drops below freezing when the fruit is in that stage of development, we will run water and use fans when available to…

Currently rainfall is tracking a 200% of “normal” for this time period with a total rainfall of 8 inches to date, although our snowpack levels are less than average. While it was a cold December, the chill hours still remain below 500, which is the lowest on record at this point in time over the last five years. There is still time to accumulate additional chill hours, we continue to count hours until the trees bloom. We are in the heart of pruning in our vineyards. The pre-pruner is still working its way through our vines. We have a new…

Tule fog is a dense, ground-hugging fog that forms in California’s Central Valley during the late fall and winter months, especially after winter rains. It develops when moist air becomes trapped under a layer of cool, stagnant air, creating extremely low visibility that can reduce sight to just a few feet. On foggy days the diurnal temperatures stay low all day. There is a much smaller range between the high and low temperature then we see on a typical winter’s day. This helps with chill hours because it allows for more consecutive hours at lower temperatures, but the fog traps…