04/28/06 Bumper Fruit Crop

Bumper fruit crop for '06? I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. It's early in the growing season but by most reports 2006 may be a good growing year. Gip Redman, field manager for Holtzinger Fruit is optimistic. REDMAN: Some of the comments that fellow field men and growers have told me is I think I have fence posts and poles that hold up my trellis' have got bloom on them. One guy told me he thought his grass had bloom on it, meaning that there is a lot of potential in the apple fields out there this year. The bloom looks real heavy. Pear bloom looks good. I have not been up in the Wenatchee area to really survey that area but the reports I'm getting, it's pretty good bloom up there too. Cherries look to have a heavy bloom. Even my one little dwarf cherry tree planted only last year was covered in blooms only a week ago. Blooms are important but even more so it the pollination. REDMAN: But the pollination weather up until this week has been up and down. I think we've had sufficient hours to get most varieties pollinated adequately. Whether that has subtracted a little bit from the size of the crop, we won't know for another month, but hopefully it has. Potentially there is a large crop of cherries and a large crop of apples and pears out there. So with the potential for a bumper crop, how will the immigration issue affect this year. Monday Gip Redman discusses the problems. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.