Cherries Still Looking Good

Cherries Still Looking Good. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Rains moving through the northwest this week have cherry growers on edge and according to BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries, at the moment it still looks pretty good for the crop.

THURLBY: The crop we have left on the trees and we’re kind of working through what we consider the challenge portion of our season because of the rains we had at the end of May had a very large negative effect on our early season but even with that this is still an early start for us.

There have been a few reports of hail damage in some areas but not enough to really affect the overall crop.

THURLBY: I was just running the numbers and we have averaged over the last 5 years about 400-thousand, 450-thousand boxes up to the 18th of June. So we’ve shipped about half a million and we’ve had late seasons. As of today we are looking about 1.3 to 1.4 million boxes shipped so we are coming out of the gates faster even with the assumption we have lost a significant portion of our early crop.

Quality has been excellent at least in the Bing’s I have sampled.

THURLBY: The market itself remains firm which is always nice and kind of the buzzword from our sales portion of our industry is that all of the retail and importer groups out there are being put on allocation meaning you get a little bit here and you get a little bit there trying to keep everybody happy.

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