Late Spring but Cherries Optimistic

Late Spring but Cherries Optimistic. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

If most of the cherry orchards in the Northwest are looking like the one lone tree in my yard, it is going to be a wonderful cherry season. Gip Redman, Oregon Cherry Growers says it will be a late one.

REDMAN: One of the main stories is how late the spring has been breaking. We are still behind last year which ended up being behind normal. And last year we were going through the end of March and most of April was real cold and we had all those cold events that frosted out a lot of cherries.

It then got cold on into part of June last year.

REDMAN: This year we’ve been colder longer but we’ve had some milder temps and I think if it gets mild like they’re talking about we won’t pick any later for cherries than last year, maybe even earlier but I don’t think we’ll catch up with normal.

Gip says that even with the cold winter most of the cherry trees are looking good.

REDMAN: Even though we had cold weather in the winter it really wasn’t anything that did any damages to the crops. The bud set that I see in cherries is just incredible. Fence posts are going to bloom. There’s just a lot of bloom and so the potential is there for a big crop.

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