Cherries A Poppin'

Cherries A Poppin'

Cherries A Poppin'! I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

If you haven't noticed the cherry trees are filled with bright red cherries. Seems all this sunshine and lack of rain has been a blessing for the northwest cherry growers. Oregon Cherries, Gip Redman says things south of the border are looking good.

REDMAN: At this point in time, Greg, it's almost too good to be true. Everything seems to be going our way so I'm waiting for the hammer to drop and maybe one of those rare years where things seem to go right. It's been very good growing weather and according to the degree days - in the last 10 years we're either first or second year ahead.

Reports that some growers in Washington have started picking some early varieties are true according to Redman.

REDMAN: We're running a little early down here. Washington is already starting. We will probably get started next week.

The latest crop estimate from the 5-state growers meeting was for a 20-million box crop this year and Redman says he thinks that's still a good number although some of the fruit is sizing on the small side.

REDMAN: That goes hand in hand with heavier crops and this is a little bit heavier crop. Most growers now have gotten pretty aggressive in their pruning which is going to help size but I have seen, and my colleagues have been reporting also that most of the fruit is spread out. It's not clumped, other than Chelan. Chelan has a real bad clumping problem and they're pretty heavy this year.

More tomorrow.

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

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