Small Fruit

Small Fruit

Small Fruit. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
Small fruit plays a large role in Washington’s agriculture picture. Dr. Tom Walters with the Mount Vernon Northwestern Washington Research & Extension Center.
WALTERS: Our major berry crops here in Washington are raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. For raspberries we produce about 90% or more of the processing raspberries grown in the United States. A lot of the fresh market raspberries in the U.S. come from California but the ones you get in jams or yogurts or ice cream, things like that, most of those come from Washington State.
Most of those berries come from Skagit and Whatcom counties. But the berry industry is growing in the state.
WALTERS: More recently there has been a real sudden surge in plantings of blueberries over on the east side. Quite a lot around the Tri-Cities area and to a lesser extent up by Wenatchee and so there is a lot of new production coming on in there and maybe by the end of this year it could be as much as 2500 acres of blueberries on the east side of the state.
Small fruit in the northwest consists of grapes, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, kiwi, huckleberry, gooseberry and currants most of which are produced on the west side. Walters says that producers are starting to get geared up for the ’09 growing season and like many other producers are keeping an eye on the cooler temperatures as of late.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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