A Guide to Spring Fruits Season

At Frog Hollow Farm, the arrival of spring means one thing: an abundance of fruit growing throughout our orchards.

Our prime season begins with flowering and fragrant trees, which are a precursor of all the delights to come. This picturesque sight sets the stage for our calendar of spring fruits, starting with mulberries and progressing through our beloved stone fruits.

Over these months, you’ll spot our cherries, red, shiny and plump, and apricots with their golden hues flecked with pink. These eventually give way to peaches: incredibly sweet and eat-over-the-sink juicy.

Whether you participate in our CSA, want to order a box as the season begins or have planned out your pre-orders, our guide provides an overview of all spring fruits in season, and what to expect as they arrive.

Schedule of Spring Fruits in Season

Following the growing season in California, we see blueberries emerge in late March/early April. In May, the spring fruit season begins in earnest with cherries, apricots and mulberries ripening to sweet perfection. In May, we encourage you to get to know our soft, velvety and succulent apricots; they’re a notable departure from the underwhelming and mealy varieties most find at the grocery store. Our orchards also grow apriums – a hybrid between a plum and apricot that fuses their tartness and honeyed sweetness for complex and layered flavor.

As we head into summer, June marks the start of nectarine season, as well as when plums and pluots make their first appearance. Peaches also remain a constant as the days get longer and warmer.

For a complete schedule of spring fruits, check out our full seasonal calendar.

Our Spring Fruits

Mulberries
Shipped frozen, mulberries are incredibly aromatic and with a deep sweet flavor and very little acid. They’re tantalizing all on their own as a snack or to invigorate your morning smoothie. Due to their high sugar content, frozen mulberries don’t clump together. The most delicate fruit we grow, mulberries are packed with nutrients like vitamin C, fiber and iron.

Blueberries

Though we don’t grow blueberries, we’ve partnered with California’s premium blueberry growers to deliver plump, lush and firm berries that burst with flavor.

Apricots

Signing up for our fresh fruit subscription boxes, like our Farm Box Membership, will introduce you to many of the varieties of apricots we grow during apricot season. Our Gotta Have My Apricots fruit club delivers four varieties for a sampling of just how diverse – and seriously juicy – these stone fruits can be.

Apricots benefit from our region’s unique growing conditions – with days of warm sunshine followed by cool night breezes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. What you’ll taste is an incredibly succulent and rich fruit, with a palette of flavors that evolves during the harvest as each variety expresses its unique flavor profile.

Our apricot season encompasses 13 varieties of apricots and apriums, from the early-season Kettleman, a firm-fleshed apricot with a classic sweet and tangy flavor, to the late-season Goshen Gold, known for its incredible sweetness and tender juicy flesh. Every variety we grow is a delight to the senses!

Cherries

Once cherries are in season, everyone wants a box! While their brief harvest season increases demand, our orchards introduce a cornucopia of flavors in a relatively short time frame. Rich, sweet and fragrant, cherries are the spring’s most coveted fruit.

Explore the beautiful deep red Royal Tioga, an early-season cherry known for its excellent balance of sweetness and acidity; Brooks, a large, plump and dark red fruit that is frequently featured in Alice Waters’ copper fruit bowl; Rainier, with a golden-blush skin and flesh with floral notes and delicate sweetness; Bing, the quintessential dark red cherry with a bold, rich flavor; and Stella, closing out our season with its deep red flesh.

Plums

For the perfect plum, firm skin gives into juicy and tender flesh. Our plums and pluots run with these expectations. In one direction, biting into our early season Santa Rosa reveals soft, juicy amber flesh lightly flushed with a ring of red. Our late summer Emerald Beaut, on the other hand, has delicate green skin that turns golden with a hint of blush and delivers a firmer, almost crips flesh with a rounded sweetness.

Nectarines

A fuzz-less peach, our nectarines have firm flesh with a meltingly juicy mouthfeel and a tangy to sweet flavor profile, depending on the variety. Our white nectarines are aromatic and have an incredible sweetness while many of our yellow varieties dance between sweet and tangy with plenty of sugar content and acid to balance the sweetness.

Nectarines are typically available starting in mid-June and are harvested through August.

Peaches

While we generally consider peaches a summertime delight, their season officially kicks off in spring with early-season varieties like Princess Time and Galaxy harvested in May.

Whether eaten out of hand, sliced for a salad or baked, our peaches are a truly succulent and memorable experience: With your first bite, the sweet nectar of the juicy flesh has been known to run down your hand and make you run to finish your peach over the closest sink!

Attesting to this stone fruit’s expansive possibilities, our orchards grow over 20 varieties spanning yellow and white peaches, as well as freestone and clingstone types. Our Galaxy White peaches are the only donut peach we grow and can be pre-ordered in advance of harvest. Our Gotta Have My Peaches and Weekly Farm Box fruit clubs showcase multiple varieties spanning our peach season. And our fruit subscription box, the Farm Box Membership, delivers mixed fruit, including peaches, throughout the growing season.

Ordering Fresh Fruit Subscription Boxes for Spring

Taste how fruit truly should taste – sweet yet with depth, the perfect texture and a layered palette of tasting notes and flavors.

While you can order a box of any of our fruits during the harvest season or as a pre-order, our organic fruit clubs keep pace with the harvest. Depending on the fruit club you choose, you’ll receive fruit weekly, monthly or at a staggered cadence throughout the spring and summer season.

Due to demand, many opt to pre-order their spring and summer fruit clubs to ensure they receive the specific fruits they want, while others opt for our fresh fruit subscription Farm Box membership, and manage their subscription cadence to fit their schedules. Our fruit clubs ship based on fruit availability – understand that colder weather may delay our estimated harvest windows. We ship based on when the fruit is ready for harvest. We wait until our fruit fully ripens, check the sugar content to ensure its flavor, and pick the harvest by hand, all before shipping a box directly to you!

For pre-orders and fruit clubs:

• You’ll select from one type of fruit or have the option to try multiple varieties through our Pick of the Crop Club, Frog Hollow Favorites or the Monthly Cornucopia of California box.
• You’ll select from a three-, five- or 10-pound box for your orders.

Ready to have a supply of fruit delivered to your door – 48 hours after being picked from the trees? Sign up for any of our fruit clubs, subscribe to our Farm Box Membership or pre-order all of your spring favorites now!