More On Cherry Outlook

One of the northwests first big crops is well into development and that makes NW Cherries, BJ Thurlby excited. He says all the early signs are very positive.

THURLBY: It'll be interesting to see how the bees work. There's pollen floating around everywhere and there's blooms and blossoms all over the place so the positive thing right now it looks like we're going to have a nice crop and the other positive that we're seeing here for the domestic market certainly is we're going to be early enough to lots of fruit to the market for the 4th of July.

Independence Day has traditionally been the target date for cherries since fresh cherries are a staple picnic snack. Thurlby has another peek into the crystal ball.

THURLBY: If I had to pick a day that we'll start picking or just kind of looking at the degree days and lining up with previous years that look similar which 2013 is a great one for comparison and we started picking on June 1st so it looks like an early June start and the California crop itself is 4 or 5 days early so we don't see a huge crossover this year at all

Any concerns for this growing season?

THURLBY: The labor thing is never going to go away. The challenge to the grower right now is to find enough bodies to get his crop harvested and last year it was compounded because you had all these districts picking at the same time and again that's also part of this positive spread in degree days that we're seeing right now is that it allows for an orderly harvest which I can tell you every grower would love to have.

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