Cherry Crop Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

If you have been by your local cherry orchard you know that cherry season is just around the corner. BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries says this could be a good year.

THURLBY: Our estimate came out and it was 20.9-million boxes so it was just under 21-million boxes. And then I bumped into 2 or 3 pretty good sized growers this weekend and they’re all saying they’re seeing a little bit more drop than they anticipated and the hot weather this week will really tell the story as to what’s going to stay on the trees.

Many orchardists are seeing some “drop” of buds.

THURLBY: And that’s not good. I don’t know if that is indicative of all the orchards. You know we know there’s a good looking crop or there was certainly on the tress two to three weeks ago. We kind of knew it last fall because we had a nice mild fall. We had great bud development in the fall. We had a mild winter. We knew we’d have a pretty decent crop this year.

Thurlby says the processed market this year could be interesting.

THURLBY: The process market this year should be an interesting deal because Michigan has really had a tough go of it. They got really warm and then they had some freezing temperatures come in and they’re thinking now if they harvest 30% of the crop it will be wonderful. So there’s going to be a huge deficit in the United States relative to processed cherry product.

Tomorrow we’ll find out what that might mean for northwest cherry growers.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.