Soft Fruit Update

Soft Fruit Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

This is the time of year that we spend a lot of time talking about cherries but it’s also the time for several other soft fruit varieties to come off the trees. BJ Thurlby is the President of the Washington State Fruit Commission and he updates us on apricots.

THURLBY: The apricot season is actually underway. We’re shipping Castlebrite’s and a couple of other early varieties. This is a super early start for the apricot deal. A lot of times it doesn’t start until around the 20th or so of June. I was actually out in a packing shed last week who I think probably had the first cots in the state and they looked great. We actually had a group with us and we were all eating apricots walking around watching cherries run.

He says the California crop is pretty much done.

THURLBY: I think the timing of our crop is good and as soon as we get into some of our core varieties on apricots like Robada and Rivals that’ll be the peak of the season for us so we’ve got a lot of great apricots to come and there’s kind of been a fun little revival on apricots. I can’t tell you how many times in the last year when I’m sitting there on Sunday afternoon and doing some reading and my wife is watching one of her cooking shows and I look up and I hear they’re using apricots in a recipe.

And then right behind will be peaches and nectarines.

THURLBY: We’re going to get going on the earliest stuff probably around the middle of July, maybe a little earlier and then we’ll really start to ramp up and it sounds like the California crop is running ahead this year as well. We should really be peaking on our key varieties by the 10th of August and finish strong right into the middle of September.

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