08/13/08 Stone Fruit Update

Stone Fruit Update. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. As the summer progresses and fall soon approaches so does the rest of the fruit season including apples and stone fruits like peaches & apricots. The cool spring has slowed things a bit but according to grower Gip Redman, it looks good. REDMAN: Doing well. Nice quality. Good crop load. Actually I'm pretty pleased with the tonnage I came through the frost with. And I think the state crop is down though. Just like cherries, the numbers are estimated considerably lower. REDMAN: They're estimating it to be down at least 25% probably. I find that a little bit hard from my own experience but that's some numbers that are being tossed around. I think California has a big crop and they're commanding the market so it's not going to be an easy market to sell a crop, we're going to have to work at it. Unfortunately in the case of cherries, Redman says it will really hurt producers. REDMAN: The sad thing a about the market was the fact that you had a wound caused to these growers through the frost and poor pollination periods and the salve is to get good price returns for the cherries and while we're going to have some decent returns, it could have been a little better if we'd have had a more normal season in timing wise. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.