Planting of new crop strawberry in Oxnard is being delayed a few days due to lack of chill hours in the area of California where the nursery plants are grown. The warm weather of the past few weeks has delayed planting a few days, but there should be enough cold weather in the higher elevation areas with current conditions to allow for the nurseries to begin digging up plants for transplanting in the near future. Acreage in the Oxnard area could decrease by 1,500 acres this season compared to last season. This would put the Oxnard area at around half of the acreage farmed five years ago. The decrease is the result of poor market conditions in the past few years. Some growers have registered losses of up to $10,000 per acre in 2017.
