Grapes Are Late

Grapes Are Late. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. I have one vine of Concord grapes in my back yard that I sort of let do what it wants to do every year and just the other day I checked to see if there were any grapes..the answer was yes...and no. A few and quite small. Deb Heintz is the Director of the Washington Grape Society and that is pretty much what a lot of grape growers are seeing. HEINTZ: We had some isolated frost damage in the springtime but only in a few of the vineyards so the clusters and berry counts are down probably because of the big crop that we had last year. And overall the long term outlook is about 7.2 tons is what's predicted for 2010 crop year for Concords. That long cool spring has really pushed back a lot of fruit harvesting. HEINTZ: We are in a very late season this year, actually second latest bloom on record. Let's hope the calendar says September when the harvest starts. Normal harvest start dates for Concord juice is between September 18–20 roughly and we are seeing that pushed into the very last part of September maybe even the first part of October before we start crush. Heintz says even though this will be a shorter year the quality should be good. HEINTZ: There will be good color and quality we believe but the berries are going to be smaller than normal so we just need to get them ripened up. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.