Five State Cherry Meeting

Five State Cherry Meeting

Five State Cherry Meeting. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

It's just one month away. The Five State Cherry Meeting is the big precursor to the cherry season according to BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries. But this years meeting may be a bit late.

THURLBY: We needed to basically do it the week before because this crop is coming on quicker than I think all of us anticipated. Coming off the nice winter we had plenty of chill hours and some snow certainly in the mountains that is helping us but most of my growers were thinking there's just no way we're going to start as early as last year but our degree days are jumping up. Five of our key districts are ahead of last year which was the earliest we've ever seen the weather pattern push the fruit forward and we started harvest on May 22nd.

This years meeting will be May 25 at the Richland Red Lion.

THURLBY: This year, so far, we are talking about probably May 26 for our start up so it's going to be a little bit later but not much. And I'm excited because what I'm seeing out there is incredible vigor in the trees.

The big topic at the meeting is crop size.

THURLBY: What we're seeing, and I don't know if this is a result of lack of perfect pollination weather or the heat from last year or maybe just timing of pollinators versus our mainline variety fruit but this doesn't look to me like it's going to be a monster crop. It looks like it's going to be a nice crop. I think growers are going to have fruit and I think the quality is going to be outstanding.

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

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