Picking Apples

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

Bruce Grimm, Executive Director of the Washington State Horticultural Association seems pretty optimistic about the 2012 apple crop.

GRIMM: Well harvest is definitely underway. Gala’s are coming off, have been for the last week or so. Probably last week they got started in a big way and this week some of the medium and later areas will definitely be in full swing. Reports coming back so far indicate that people have adequate labor at this juncture. We’re not hearing of any shortages. That’s not to say there may not be some out there that we just haven’t heard about yet.

That is good news at this point and Grimm says there is another positive factor.

GRIMM: Weather conditions have been just about ideal. Cooler night the last week, week or two weeks have really helped bring the color on. We had a very hot summer. I think as everybody realizes and there was some concern about color development on Gala’s in particular being the first apples to come off.

He is hearing that fruit quality has been looking pretty good so far and that the crop numbers have remained pretty steady.

GRIMM: I think probably not much change from the numbers that were reported at the Outlook conference and clearly the overall national crop is down significantly. You have to go back to the 1980’s to find a crop this small at the national level. We don’t feel that here in Washington. We’ve had some crop reduction by virtue of the hail storms that hit a large number of the growing areas and caused significant damage in some of those areas.

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