An abundance of new growth has occurred on trees of all ages as a result of the near tropical weather conditions. New crop fruit continues to make good progress with very little late or off bloom fruit. Several fresh fruit packing houses have representatives out in groves testing early bloom fruit that may be close to passing maturity tests for the start of the 2000-01 season. Several small fresh squeeze juice operations are still running late bloom oranges and grapefruit. Caretakers have been very active mowing, chopping, and discing cover crops that have made good growth with the help of the summer rains.
Growers are busy spraying, fertilizing, and applying herbicides.
Dead tree removal continues in all areas along with the burning of grove debris. Of the total forecast, 65.0 million cartons are estimated to be in the Central Valley. The crop has been maturing well with large sizes, but fruit set is down significantly. The 80 percent confidence interval is from 180 to 230 million pounds. This means that the results of our sampling procedures will encompass the true mean 80 percent of the time.