It's Cherry Season

Believe it or not there was some cherries being picked over the long weekend. Not a lot but according to NW Cherries BJ Thurlby things are looking good and he talks about the recent cherry industry meeting.

THURLBY: About 70 NW Cherry industry leaders really got kind of an overall picture of where this crop is and it's kind of right where we thought it was. This is a nice size crop but it's probably going to be down about 15% from last years crop which puts it at 19,700,000 boxes. That's a very manageable crop. It's coming early as we all know.

We've had a number of record high temp months in the last 12 and has been a very mild spring which has caused good fruit set and early ripening.

THURLBY: This has kind of pushed what we thought was going to be a shorter crop into a crop that's going to be really about the right size for the market we have out there. This nice warm weather we have has - and we've seen it since March literally - has been such that the cherries have had great cell division. We're seeing good size. I've got growers that have Chelans that are saying that they're 75% 10 row and larger already.

He says besides helping with size the warm temps also contribute to greater sugars which makes the cherries much more desirable for consumers.

THURLBY: So from my perspective we've got a crop that consumers are going to want to purchase and come back and purchase again so right now I think we've got all systems go and what we think is a beautiful crop on the trees.

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