Potential Cherry Crop

Potential Cherry Crop. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Conditions have been pretty good so far for the development of the 2012 cherry crop. The winter was mild as has been the early spring and according to Oregon Cherry Growers, Gip Redman that has allowed good pollination.

REDMAN: The bee activity was fantastic. They worked in some weather this year that normally. I saw a 57 degree day, gray. It was calm so that helps but they were just swarming out. Not like as if it was 80 but they were really busy. And the other thing I noticed was that very few were down in the dandelions

Redman isn’t sure why this was the case although he did think that the fragrance was better this year from the cherry blossoms.

REDMAN: Having said that, that indicates a lot of positive things. What I’ve been surprised with when I’ve been out in orchards looking is that I’m seeing maybe not quite as many cherries showing up as I thought might have been set. A little more space between the cherries, so that’s good. That’ll mean we can hang a large crop in sizes.

Fewer cherries on a tree can mean bigger sizes and orchardists tend to prune their trees heavily to help increase cherry size.

REDMAN: What I noticed earlier was mainly threes and fours cherry count per bud where they can be fours and fives and in a couple of down years we were looking at more twos and threes so it’s a moderate amount of cherries and I think that also speaks to why they’re spaced out a little bit.

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