Soft Fruit

Soft Fruit

Soft Fruit. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The northwest is famous for its apples, pears and cherries but you may not know that the northwest is also home to some other fabulous soft fruit. Namely peaches, apricots, nectarines & plums. BJ Thurlby with Washington State Fruit Commission says the season is coming on rapidly.

THURLBY: I’m telling you we’ve got a gorgeous crop out there and it’s a big one. The other positive side is the market is actually pretty strong right now. The California crop is the smallest we’ve seen in 5 years and some other growing districts that really compete with us like Colorado, like Pennsylvania are short on crops this year so the feel for demand is as strong as I’ve seen it in a couple of years. So it’s very positive.

As mentioned a lot of media and consumer attention goes to apples & cherries and Thurlby says that is a challenge for growers as well.

THURLBY: The usual challenge is you go through a cherry season and it’s cherries, cherries, cherries, cherries and then we jump back over to soft fruit and we’re there this year, the cherry deal is going longer because we started 2 weeks late but the soft fruit deal is starting up and coming on in earnest right now as we speak and we’re looking at probably 2 more months of shipping on soft fruit but really we’re going to see a huge peak just over the next 4 weeks.

Some soft fruit is ahead of others but the crops look very good.

THURLBY: The good news is we’ve got full crops out there. Flavors and size seem to be very good so it’s just all positive so far. They’re all coming on and the apricot is actually for the most part - we’ve got some what we call late, we call them gourmet late varieties that are coming off but it’s probably three quarters done.

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

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