Stone Fruit Season

Stone Fruit Season

Stone Fruit Season. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

We have talked about cherries and pears and now of course apples but there are a lot of other tree fruits out there that are coming off the trees. BJ Thurlby with the Washington State Fruit Commission.

THURLBY: We're still in harvest as far as peaches and nectarines go there's still a few prunes and plums coming off but we're on the wind-down to say the least and again, I told you before, when we started going California had a major fruit call relative to listeria and coming out of the blocks it slowed things down. We had some of our largest retail partners with signs on the shelves saying if you've bought peaches between June whatever date and July this date you can bring them back to the store, you can get refunded for them because of this recall.

He says that was a tough start to the season.

THURLBY: I think we've made it through it. It's been a challenge I think from the get-go for most of our packers, shippers and our growers but overall it's been a good year. I think we're going to end up with most of the crop moved successfully. California has kind of had a drop down in terms of volume of nectarines which we've slipped right in and picked up and we've had some fruit going to places that we haven't seen in the past so that's a positive.

Thurlby says after the California issue it took a few weeks to regain consumer confidence and we'll talk more about that and the crop tomorrow.

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

Previous ReportMore On Apple Harvest
Next ReportMore on Stone Fruit Harvest