harvest window Archives

Condensed harvest window on blueberries

When plants have a surplus of energy, reproductive buds are all large and uniform in size, blossoms all pollinate at the same time, and fruit all mature in a condensed window. For machine-harvested blueberries, this can mean harvesting 90% of the crop in a single pass. For fresh-market, hand-picked berries, this can mean harvesting the entire crop in 4-6 passes over as many weeks. You can calculate the increased labor efficiency and reduced harvest costs.

How bud uniformity can reduce harvest labor

When plants have high energy, buds become very uniform in size and maturity, and blossoms open and pollinate close to the same time. All of this can result in a condensed harvest window, which is valuable for both machine harvested and hand picked crops.

We have observed as much as 30-35% reduction in harvest time window on a number of varieties, which leads to much greater harvest efficiency.

Here is an example of blueberry buds which will produce uniformly ripe fruit in a time window of a few weeks.