New York state's crops share strong outlook for summer season

Whether you’re looking for apples, sweet corn, squash, onions, snap beans or a host of other items, you’ll find ample supplies out of New York state this summer, and the quality should be good, grower-shippers say.

“It’s a diverse industry,” said Brian Reeves, president of the Batavia-based New York State Vegetables Growers Association and partner in Reeves Farms, Baldwinville, N.Y.

The state has substantial fresh-market production and also grows product for processing, he said.

“We’ve got large processing growers with thousands of acres to small organic, niche operations for farmers markets and everything in between,” Reeves said.

Most of the state’s farms are within four hours of major metropolitan areas and can serve several East Coast cities, he said.

Eden Valley Growers Inc., Eden, N.Y., was harvesting green squash, cabbage and cucumbers in June, with plans to start corn by July 10, and should have variety peppers available by the end of July, said Dave Walczak, operations manager.

“Quality has been great so far,” he said in late June.

“It’s been pretty dry,” he said. “We had a warm spell in early spring, but now it’s kind of normal.”

Reeves Farms also expects to have good quality on its conventional sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, winter squashes, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, cabbage, pumpkins, peas and eggplant, Reeves said.

About 15% of the company’s production is organic grape tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, blueberries, zucchini, yellow squash and winter squash.

On the fruit side, the New York Apple Association is gearing up for harvest season with a campaign launching in early August, said Cynthia Haskins, president and CEO.

Apple harvesting typically begins in mid-August with Paula Red and ginger gold apple varieties.

“If you like tart apples, take a healthy bite of a Paula Red,” Haskins said. “It’s one of our earliest varieties to be harvested, and the first taste of fall for many apple lovers.”

The fresh-picked ginger gold is a great snacking apple in late summer, she added.

The state produces more than 250 apple varieties, 30 of which are available in commercial volumes.

Other favorites include jonamac, SweeTango, mcintosh, gala, Honeycrisp, SnapDragon, cortland, macoun, empire, red delicious, fuji, RubyFrost, Crispin, golden delicious and EverCrisp.

The state produced 32,261,905 million bushels of apples last season and should have “ample promotable production” this year, Haskins said.

“New York did experience areas of frost damage, but those situations were isolated, where other areas were untouched by the nip of cold that happened in late May,” she said.

Eden Valley Growers plans to expand its value-added product offerings by increasing its production of packaged corn this summer, Walczak said.

The company also is looking to change its lettuce program for next year and is doing trials on romaine hearts.

“We like what we’re seeing so far,” he said.

Overall, volume for the 10-member co-op, many of whom are fifth- or sixth-generation growers, should be about the same as last year or possibly up slightly, Walczak said.

Although weather for Reeves Farms has been “decent,” Reeves said the area experienced a significant frost event on May 18 that hurt some apples and grapes. Except for some early corn and winter squash, vegetables escaped damage since they hadn’t been planted yet.

Early June was very dry; “It was probably the driest I’ve ever seen it on June 1,” Reeves said. But plenty of irrigation seemed to save the day.

“Right now, the crops look great in the field,” he said in late June.