04/27/06 Cooler Weather for Fruit

Cooler weather for fruit crop. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. As the cooler weather lingers through spring, the fruit crop in the northwest is starting to take shape. Gip Redman is manager of field services for Holtzinger Fruit. REDMAN: We had a really easy winter and it was starting to be mild in early February and it looked like we were going to get into another early spring which, at least the last two years have been quite early. And then the cold weather came in February and we've been running normal to slightly later than normal ever since. We never really caught up. While there has been some frost damage due to the cooler weather, most has been fairly small and most fruit crops are looking good with one exception. REDMAN: One exception is apricots and they were starting to come to life in that early February period as they don't need many hours of sleep before they start to come to life. And they got hurt pretty substantially. I think there's going to be apricots but the crop won't&will not be a large crop. It'll be a small crop of apricots. Redman said that historically cooler weather has been a good thing for Pacific Northwest fruit crops. REDMAN: When you talk to the guys who have been in the industry for a long time and their recollections are that whenever we have a normal to a little bit later spring, the we generally&the rest of the year comes together fairly well. Tomorrow we'll look at how the northwest fruit crop is shaping up. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.