Cold Snap Part 2

Cold Snap Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

We experienced two major cold snaps this past winter and Tim Smith, WSU Chelan County Extension agent says there has been some widespread damage and in a lot of cases to the spurs of the cherry trees.

SMITH: Because in the fall when the cold snap hit the bud on the tree is probably one of the hardiest parts of the tree. So in some cases we have live buds sitting on dead spurs which is the structure the fruit attaches to on the tree. The apples, young trees and grafted trees that were growing vigorously last fall didn’t seem to get as ready for the cold that hit.

Smith says that is not a good start for this year’s crop.

SMITH: I think the consensus is that the situation is worse than a lot of people know, yet. And yet it’s not as bad as the doomsayers would like to believe. I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll have good crops of everything although the cherries look like the tendency is to not have maybe as large a crop as we’ve had in the last few years.

He does feel that we will still have a good crop and even though the damage was widespread there are of course better areas than others.

SMITH: There’s less damage up north reportedly on cherries than to the south. It’s a situation that remains in flux. I don’t think we know everything that’s going on but we do know that we’ve had the most winter damage that we’ve had in the past 25 years.

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