The official start of summer is still on the horizon, but summer fruits are already here! In California, the season came early with juicy peaches, sweet apricots, and silky nectarines ripening in orchards about two weeks ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, in parts of the East Coast, South, and Midwest, wild weather has made the summer harvest a bit more complicated.
We’ll get into all of that and more in this 2026 Summer Fruit Guide, which celebrates the best fruits of the summer. Consider it a sneak peek at all of the flavors coming to our office fruit deliveries this season, especially our seasonal fruit lovers’ favorite: the Season’s Best Box!
We work with local farmers across the country to stock our boxes with seasonal goodness each week, so we know exactly what’s freshest and tasting best—and we can’t wait to share it with you. Try as many of the summer-season fruits on our list as you can to get all of their amazing health benefits. Plus, the more fresh fruit you eat, the more it will feel like summer. After all, have you truly experienced the season until you’ve had peach juice dripping down your chin?
Summer is the season of stone fruits (fruits with pits or “stones”) like apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines, and plums. It also brings berries, summer citrus, grapes, and even early-season apples and pears. Harvests start on the West Coast in May and move east as the season progresses.
So far, 2026 has been an interesting year for summer fruit. Everything from peaches to grapes arrived in California about two weeks early, and they’re all abundant and tasting delicious! Meanwhile, a late-season frost swept through the eastern part of the country, destroying many stone fruit crops and making life challenging for farmers. We’re expecting a smaller harvest from our farm partners in those areas, but the fruit they do have is tasting sweet and well worth the wait.
Read on to learn more about our favorite varieties and the farmers who grow them across the country.
California strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are here! 2026 has been a record-breaking season for strawberries, with crops up 60% from 2025. The berries taste juicy and sweet, and we have plenty of strawberry storage tips to help you enjoy them this season. Western mixes will feature summer strawberries from Better Produce.
California blueberry season came and went early, but we packed fresh ones from Homegrown Organic Farms in the spring. Now, we’re sourcing them from farmers in the Pacific Northwest for our Western mixes. We’ve also stocked up on berries from Bonita Farms, which has an extra-long berry season because it grows some of its fruit in sheltered tunnels.
Folks in the Central and Western US can look forward to blueberries in July. Some Central mixes may have Michigan berries from Mick Klüg Farms near Chicago. These little antioxidant-rich beauties are a staple of summer eating, and they should be abundant and delicious.
When you think “summer fruit,” stone fruit is probably what comes to mind—and that’s certainly true this year!
Mother Nature surprised us with strong crops of California cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, and more about two weeks ahead of schedule. As of mid-June, the California cherry season has already wrapped up, but we’re getting delicious cherries from Washington to stock our Western fruit boxes.
Vibrant plum-apricot hybrids like apriums, plumcots, and pluots are also plentiful. We’re particularly loving the Crimson Punch plumcots, which have a really intense flavor this year. All of these stone fruits are high in vitamins C and A and are great sources of dietary fiber.
On the West Coast, we’re sourcing stone fruits from Blake Carlson of Rocking Chair Farm Markets, a longtime farm partner (almost twenty years!) who will supply us with peaches, nectarines, plums, and more all summer long. Look for special bites from our other partners in California mixes, too, including Angelcot® apricots from Frieda’s and Verry Cherry plums (a tasty cherry-plum hybrid) from New Excelsior Farming via The Flavor Tree Fruit Company.
Central US customers will see apricots and a parade of other stone fruits—including donut peaches, nectarines, white peaches, and plums—from Mick Klüg Farms through the summer. On the East Coast, our friend Steve Frecon at Frecon Farms in Pennsylvania lost all of his cherries and plums to frost, but he’s still expecting to supply us with delicious peaches in late June and July. They’ll taste even better for their rarity!
Because of the crop losses in the Eastern and Central US, we’ll be adding stone fruit from slightly farther afield to our mixes to supplement the local bites, including peaches from South Carolina. You may also see a few stone fruits with safe-to-eat cosmetic imperfections, like frost ring, in our boxes. Eating fruit that’s not quite perfect (which a lot of stores won’t accept) helps support the farmers who grew it. That’s more important than ever when times are tough.
The early start to the stone fruit season could mean a shorter season overall, so savor these juicy bites while they last! If you want to experiment in the kitchen, try our recipes for Yogurt with Fresh Cherries or Simple Grilled Peach and Burrata Salad.
You may not think of pears and apples as summer season fruits, but the earliest crops arrive in mid-summer. California Bartlett, Bosc, and Red pears lead the pack in the first week of July (well ahead of schedule!), followed in late July and early August by early-season apples like the sweet Gala, buttery yellow Ginger Gold, and rare Gravenstein.
The “Grav” has a special place in our hearts—it’s an endangered apple grown in Sonoma County, California. We’ll feature Gravensteins in their own special box this summer and give an extra portion of the proceeds back to the farmers to encourage them to keep planting. You can sign up for Gravenstein updates now.
Central and Eastern mixes may see local pears in September, when our friends at Mick Klüg Farms and Kauffman Orchards in Pennsylvania start picking some of their sweetest varieties.
Yes, there is a citrus fruit on our summer fruit list! We’re saying goodbye to the navel oranges of winter and spring and welcoming Valencia oranges, which are named for the Spanish city. Valencias have thin skins and few seeds and are considered one of the best oranges for juicing. If you’re not sure about the difference between a navel and a Valencia, here’s a tip: The navel orange has a belly button on its underside, which is how it gets its name.
You may notice some green on your summer oranges. If you do, don’t sweat it—they’re not underripe. You’re actually seeing a fruit beauty mark called citrus regreening, which happens when oranges get an extra dose of sun in the orchard. The sun triggers chlorophyll production in the peel to help protect the fruit from sunburn. This can give summer oranges a green color that’s not only safe to eat, but, as one farmer told us, could also hint that the fruit is extra sweet.
Like the other summer fruits of the season, grapes have arrived early! The harvest is starting strong in California with Red Flame grapes and Sugraone green grapes. As the season progresses, look out for specialty varieties like pea-sized Champagne grapes, super-sweet Cotton Candy™ grapes, and crunchy Moon Drops™ grapes—a unique variety named for its elongated shape and dark purple skin.
Stay tuned for more on grapes in our 2026 Fall Fruit Guide, and in the meantime…
If your office gets recurring deliveries of our Season’s Best Box or Harvest Mix, these flavorful summer fruits are already headed your way! If not, this is a great time to upgrade your mix from our basic Staples Mix or try out office fruit delivery from The FruitGuys for the first time. Just choose your favorite box and ideal frequency (weekly, every other week, or monthly) and eat your way through our Summer Fruit Guide all season long.
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