Missing Fruits and Vegetables?

[Elennare]

So, I went to buy some fresh peaches the other day, after previously seeing them in the store, and they're gone!  I have checked several different grocery stores, and can find no peaches.  TONS of apples, some oranges, a small amount of berries, a couple of melons, and maybe bananas appear to be the sole content of the fruit sections at every grocery store I have checked.  But 90% apples.  Where did the peaches go?

I also want to grow some cherry tomatoes in a pot in my backyard.  I did this last year, and had great success.  There were fruit/vegetable plants starting to show up for sale at the different stores (I bought my mom some strawberry plants), but now that I want to buy a cherry tomato plant, there are no edible plants to be found!  I found one store that had a couple of normal tomato plants, and a different store that had a few herbs, but no where near the variety and availability of fruit/vegetable plants they had last year.

Does anyone know what's going on?  Where has all this stuff gone?  There's adds on TV for planting gardens, but why can't you buy any of it in the stores?  Especially since it had started to show up, and now seems to have vanished?  Or is this a Seattle-area thing only?

[Merlin the Elder]

In my part of the country, we've had some really bizarre weather patterns in the past year or so, going from one extreme to another. We were in a drought until last Saturday, and now we're flooding.  I know California has been plagued with drought conditions, and I guess (though I don't know...I'm not a farmer) that your peaches may come from there.  Weather certainly has affected the availability and price of a number of items here.

[Morgan Dreadlocke]

Severe winter freeze ruined many southwest crops well into mid Mexico. We lost several trees right down to ground level near Tucson.

[DonaCatalina]

All that snow and ice we had in January and February, and single digit freezes, killed crops across central and south Texas, including peach orchards near Fredericksburg. All across the state there is a shortage of tomatoes, lettuce and other fruits and vegetables.

[Merlin the Elder]

Have you tried D.C.? I think all the fruits and vegetables went there.

[crashbot]

If you have a local farmers market, try that, I went to the one here in Dallas last week and it was packed full of fruit and veggies, including peaches.