2015 Cherry Crop Wrap Up

The 2015 cherry crop is done and in the record books. BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries give us a wrap up.

THURLBY: Overall it turned out to be a good year in terms of volume. The cherry crop, I think, all of us kept thinking, ok we've had some rain at the beginning, we had some wind at the beginning then the fruit that came out of that was really, really good fruit and then as we got further into the summer we ended up with mid-June super heat and then late June super heat and I thought those two things really put wrinkles into the overall season but we had a good run up to the Fourth of July and then we had a struggle afterwards.

He said it did clean up after a fashion but still had to deal with a lot of heat.

THURLBY: We dealt with the heat and quality issues kind of from start to finish but I mean over all the fruit that got into the box, which again was 20.2 million boxes this year was well received in the market and sold through and I think that overall it was a positive year. I've got some growers on the late side that I just wish would have a full season of success and from that standpoint this leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth because I thought we had a really nice market going and then Mother Nature stepped in and caused us some issues but that's the cherry business.

Thurlby says the export market was a harder sell this year and gives kudos to his export marketing team for doing a good job selling this crop. All sights are now set on what may be in store for the 2016 crop.

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