Cherries in a Swirl
If you like cherries, last year might just as well have never happened. After early spring rains chilled pollination, the 1995 California harvest amounted to barely a third of normal.
And with a cheap yen fueling the Japanese export market, things got pretty crazy. At one point it was estimated that 80% to 85% of the harvest was going overseas. There are no statistics to prove or disprove that, but when someone is willing to pay $100 a 18-pound carton for cherries, you can bet they’re going to get the lion’s share.
But in just another couple of weeks, that long cherry drought should finally end, and--though there are still a few question marks remaining--predictions are for a normal harvest, whatever that is.
“There is no such thing as a normal harvest with cherries,” says Jim Culbertson, director of the California Cherry Advisory Board. “But this year certainly is not one.”
Predictions for this year’s haul range from around 2.2 million to 3 million cartons (last year wound up at about 1.1 million). Either is far short of 1994’s record 3.8 million, but either should be enough to ensure a decent supply at reasonable prices. Look for cherries to be between $1.50 and $2 a pound, with specials running even lower.
The questions stem from the extraordinarily warm winter we just enjoyed (all of us but fruit growers, that is). Cherry trees need a certain amount of cold weather to form fruit. The exact figure depends on the variety, but the average is around 1,100 to 1,200 chill hours. (A chill hour is defined as an hour below 45 degrees). This winter, most of the cherry-growing areas got less than 750 chill hours.
“We had a longer bloom than normal and we had perfect weather during bloom, but growers are not seeing the kind of good fruit set that we should be seeing from that kind of weather,” says Joe Grant, the county extension advisor for the Stockton area. “The fruit set here is spotty and medium to light. It’ll be an average crop, not anything huge.”
“On the same trees we’ve got cherries of various sizes, set at different times,” says Culbertson. “Growers are still up in the air as to whether that fruit will fall off. Nobody’s had much experience with a year like this.”
