Canadian Blueberries & Cranberries Crop Report 04.07.24

Wild Blueberries

The upcoming wild blueberry harvest looks promising this year. Crops have moved beyond the stage of green blueberries; most fields now feature pinkish blueberries with slight purplish hues. Some blue blueberries have already been visible for several days.

The 2024 harvest will be earlier than usual. Wild blueberry producers are utilising a bioclimatic model that precisely predicts the ripening date. This tool, called a meteogram, aggregates thermal data to forecast the arrival of specific phenological stages during the growing season, such as ripening.

Despite some areas experiencing issues with insects like caterpillars, most growers believe pests will not cause significant damage to the fruits. For wild blueberries, all signs indicate that the harvest will begin around the 21st of July in the Lac St-Jean region. Last year, the first blueberries were harvested on the 6th of August, which was already considered very early!

Cranberries

This year, a more pronounced lack of uniformity in the growth of cranberry plants has been observed. This is due to an unusual winter and significant stress during the spring, caused by sustained frost episodes and an advanced growth stage that left plants more vulnerable.

Pollination continues to be challenging, as bee hives start their season in the wild blueberry fields before they migrate to the cranberry fields, but bees can be finicky as they refuse to work on adverse weather days.

The potential yield for the 2024 October season is still anticipated to be above average, likely between the record-breaking level of 2022 and the average of 2023.

via Embleme Cannberge