Harvest calendar
Spanish orange harvest calendar
Regional picking windows by variety. Our own harvest dates are still awaiting confirmation.
- Navel Lane LateJanuary to April
- NavelinaOctober to March
- Clementina ClemenulesNovember to January
- Navel FoiosNovember to February
The chart shows the generic window for each variety in the comarca. The dates our own plots are actually picked will be published campaign by campaign, including the year a harvest ran late and why. That data does not exist yet and we are not going to invent it.
Start from the week the fruit has to arrive
A harvest calendar is the wrong end of the problem to start from. The week the fruit has to be at your premises comes first, and everything else works backwards from it: the lorry before the packing, the packing before the pick. The shortlist falls out of that. What the chart adds is the one constraint nobody can negotiate: a cultivar that is not ripe in your week is not an option in your week, whatever else has been agreed.
Two dates get confused in almost every first enquiry, and separating them early is worth the extra line: the date you need the fruit, and the date somebody proposes to load it. Receiving hours go with the first. If the order splits across depots, each part needs its own destination, because a shared picking window says nothing about routing.
Where two windows overlap
For part of the campaign more than one cultivar is pickable at once, and that overlap is most of the flexibility a seasonal programme has. It is also where a chart stops being useful. A regional window is an agronomic statement about a comarca, and it says nothing about how many pallets of a given size exist in one grower's block on one Thursday.
If your programme can take a change of cultivar, the useful thing to write down is what has to stay constant: the size, the pack, the way it looks on a shelf, the machine it goes into. Some of those survive a swap and some do not. The ones that do not are worth naming before an alternative is offered rather than after it has been accepted.
A transition is a specification review
A programme that runs across the season crosses at least one cultivar change, and the change is where a receiving team ends up with fruit it was not expecting. Treating each one as a small specification review costs an email and saves a phone call at the dock. The cultivar name on the order has to move with it, and so does whatever your own customer has been promised.
Navelina opens our campaign and Navel Lane Late closes it, with Navel Foios through the middle and the Clemenules clementines in the first half. Approved alternatives are worth putting in writing while everyone is calm. A vague agreement to swap, made in October, becomes a dispute in January.
The calendar cannot tell you about a lot
Maturity is a property of fruit, not of a month. Where sweetness, acidity or juice yield changes whether you can use a lot, ask which measurements exist for the fruit under discussion, and be ready for the answer to be none: those rows are marked on request on our datasheets because nobody has measured them on our own fruit. A seasonal average cannot fill a blank like that.
Our own picking dates are in the same state. The windows on this page are regional, drawn for the comarca and not for five particular plantings, which means nothing here reserves fruit or fixes a week. Before committing to repeat deliveries, separate the total you expect to buy from the amount you need each time, and say which sizes you could accept if the pick runs small.
Turning a shortlist into an enquiry
Once the chart and the variety pages have narrowed it down, what we need is short: the cultivar, a rough quantity, the destination and the week. A pack format goes in if your warehouse or your customer has already fixed one. A promotion date or a receiving deadline goes in too, because a delivery that lands after it is worth nothing to you.
For a programme that continues across the campaign, describe the rhythm: how often you expect to order, and how late you can confirm each one. The availability page is where supply gets checked week by week. An offer still needs the fruit and the delivery arrangements confirmed for your particular enquiry.
Month by month
What is on the tree in this growing area month by month, including the months when nothing of ours is.
- Spanish oranges in April, our last month
- Spanish oranges in August, counted on the tree
- Spanish oranges in December, the settled month
- Spanish oranges in February, and what is gone
- Spanish oranges in January, all four in window
- Spanish oranges in July, and what fills the gap
- Spanish oranges in June, where the window shuts
- Spanish oranges in March, the handover month
- Spanish oranges in May, after ours have gone
- Spanish oranges in November, the month it starts
- Spanish oranges in October, and what opens
- Spanish oranges in September, before it starts
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.