Temperatures have been much more reasonable compared to last year, producing the sweetest cherries. Domex Superfresh Growers® caught up with Dave Gleason, Chief Horticulturist, tells about current orchard operations and how temperature effects growing conditions.
Instead of following a calendar year like humans, plants grow based on temperature and weather. This “development window” is anywhere from 60-80 days for Superfresh cherries, and it can be either sped up or slowed down depending on the temperature. So, when it's blistering hot out and you're laying by the pool, a cherry tree is rapidly speeding up its growth process and compressing the development stages as a reaction to the heat. When it's less hot outside, the tree slows down the fruit growth and relaxes in the sun, resulting in larger and sweeter cherries!
The 2015 season brought record setting high temperatures in the Yakima area during June and July. Last year on June 27th the high in Yakima reached 105°F, whereas this year it peaked at 91°F. Those of us who have endured these intense summer climates know that 14° can feel like a huge difference! Fruit trees sense the warm weather and react accordingly. Last year, our cherry harvest had a smaller, more compressed “development window,” but this year our trees have settled down and turned their attention towards producing ideal fruit.
Thankfully we get quite a bit more sunlight in the summer days than in winter. On the first day of summer, June 20th, Yakima had just a hair over sixteen hours of sunlight! That's plenty of time for our trees to produce amazing high quality fruit.
Domex Superfresh Growers, one of the Kershaw Companies, is a leading grower and shipper of both conventional and organically grown apples, pears, cherries and apricots from the Pacific Northwest. The Kershaw Companies have grown into a vertically integrated organization to include farming, warehousing, sales, marketing and logistic services.
Contact:
Catherine Gipe-Stewart
Domex Superfresh Growers
Tel: 509.654.7465