06/10/08 Waiting for Cherries

Waiting for Cherries. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. If you are a cherry grower, this has been a long season. Early frost, then a long, long cool spring has been dragging this growing season out. Maybe, and that is a big word, maybe we'll see some picking later this week according to Gip Redman of the Oregon Cherry Growers. REDMAN: Maybe towards the end of this week some early Chelan's in early districts might be picked. The earliest we thought in our group was somewhere between the 14th and the 16th so it's going to warm up one of these days and I assume that when it does, the cherries are going to just jump. Besides all the cool weather growers have been watching the forecast for rain. REDMAN: That's one of those 4-letter words that your mother told you not to use if you are a cherry grower and  yea - anytime now that enough rain hits there certainly could be some damage. So with one eye on the weather it appears this will be a short year for the cherry crop. REDMAN: Oregon's down. Washington's down, everybody is and the biggest factor is probably, well, I should say there's two big factors and one was frost and the other was pollination periods. And they went hand in hand and I think there's just as much problem with pollination as there is with the frost. Redman also says there is still some concerns over the labor force although he says things look promising at this point but he also added that you just never know. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.