Cherry Update Part 3

Cherry Update Part 3. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

BJ Thurlby, president of the NW Cherry Growers is very excited about this years cherry crop.

THURLBY: I’m excited though and the fruit looks great and it’s eating good so that’s the tow big keys at this point in the season. And the market seems to be looking pretty good, I know we’ve got a lot of ads kicking in next week and I know that we’re working hard to fill them.

The weather in the NW has been almost perfect for growing big ripe red cherries even though there have been a few scattered showers. According to Thurlby there are a good number of growers picking right now.

THURLBY: We’ve been picking Chelan’s, we’ve been  picking Tieton’s. I saw some Bing’s com off this weekend, early Bing’s from down in the Prescott area and they looked great and I’ve seen some fruit called Early Robbin’s, which is an early Rainier that looked amazing and ate amazing.

There are a number of different varieties of cherries grown in the NW that will continue to ripen and be harvested through the summer. And in fact you can usually get fresh fruit from your local grocer in as little as 2 days from the time of picking. One grower a couple of blocks from my place has a stand with fresh, just picked cherries for sale.

THURLBY: We’re rockin’ & rollin’. We’re already up to about 500-thousand boxes shipped and I think over the course of this week we’re going to ship another 3 million boxes so that’s exciting.

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