When you get that delectable, juicy bite from a cherry, clementine, orange, or other fruit, you probably don’t stop to ponder why. In fact, why would you? You’re enjoying one of nature’s tasty morsels and contemplating the reasons for it seem insignificant. But if you really enjoy fresh fruit and its flavor-packed impact on your palate, you might want to consider one aspect: timely harvesting. When growers harvest fruit at the exact right time, it creates a food packed with nutrition and taste that few other foods can rival.

Why Is Timely Harvesting of Fruit Trees So Important?

From a growers’ perspective, timely harvesting is tantamount to increasing your yield and profitability. Pick the fruit too early, and it won’t taste quite right. Pick the fruit too late, and you risk lowering the overall output of the crop.

But as a consumer, timely harvesting is important for more reasons than just taste. It’s all about the longevity of the product. When a grower harvests a tree fruit at its peak, you not only get all the taste and vitamins, but you also get a product that lasts longer and tastes better than a premature or post-mature harvest. That makes a marked impact on your smoothies, cocktails, salads, and other recipes. Maybe you don’t know the difference on an eye test. But your taste buds will understand.

How Growers Know When to Harvest Tree Fruits

Growers have fruit harvest down to a science. Even when weather or other issues persist, they have an advanced knowledge of when to pluck each fruit from the tree. But this isn’t a guessing game; it’s an approach that takes years or even decades to perfect. That’s their job. So when you bite into a fruit, that’s a years-long approach to harvesting, and one that’s not easily replicated by a novice.

Post-Harvest Freshness

Picking fruits at the right time is only half the battle. Once plucked from the branches, fruits can go rotten or bad without proper storage. This goes hand-in-hand with proper harvesting. Great growers have implemented a process where they not only harvest at the right time, but also get their fruit into cold storage as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, many growers opt to lessen the burden of cold storage by outsourcing this step to subcontractors. Between the orchard and the freezer, this takes valuable moments off the life of the fruit. The result is blander fruit that loses a vast portion of its nutritional value.

To counteract this effect, many reputable growers are now turning to in-house cold storage solutions. That means that each fruit picked from the tree goes immediately into a refrigerator or freezer, minimizing taste or nutritional loss. The result is the best-tasting fruit from the optimal harvesting time.

Whether you’re a bit of a health nut or you just appreciate great taste, timely harvesting of tree fruits and subsequent cold storage make all the difference. So don’t settle for second-rate fruit that takes days or weeks to go to the middleman.

DLJ Produce provides the finest, freshest produce nationwide 365 days a year because we chase the harvest to ensure freshness, own our cold storage to minimize delays and intermixing of produce, we also have our own fleet of truckers that deliver to our customer nationwide.  This attention to detail minimizes the delays delivering to you the freshest produce with timely freshness.