Tanith Freeman cradled a cherry bough on her lap during the flight to Johannesburg, heavily laden with fruit, a few kilograms of cherries hanging in less than a metre. She was on her way to Dutoit’s launch of the new cherry season where food bloggers were introduced to the world of cherry production.
“It remains a miracle for me each year when we see the trees white in bloom and eight weeks later we get to step back into that orchard and handpick a single cherry at a time,” Tanith, Dutoit horticulturalist and product development manager, says. “Eight weeks is a very short time, our margin for error is really tiny.”
Tanith Freeman sharing her delight in cherries with guests at the Cherry Time™ launch
Each tree is cherished and manipulated to be the best it can be. “I will tell you: walking through the orchards is an absolute pleasure, nature is so forgiving. Every year we cherish the cherries we grow.”
Their receivers in the UK and Europe will also cherish the fruit that they’ll send, initially both by air and by sea, next week as the market is empty.
Magnificent winter: coldest in over a decade
“It’s been a magnificent winter. Little brown scales protect the buds from the cold and the wet and when springtime comes, they just pop. The weather has been fantastic, we want it to be cold the earlier the better. In terms of chill units it was 40% more than the previous twelve years!”
In twenty years in Ceres she hasn’t experienced the level of frost they’d had this winter, Tanoth remarks, and they could not ask for a better winter, she remarks, but springtime was not consistently optimal for pollination.
“The viability of the stamen’s sticky pad to receive pollen is less than eight hours – a work day – so the window for pollination is easily missed. The crop is a little bit light and the reason for that is purely that the weather during flowering was cold and wet.”
Best genetics for best site
“We’ve taken a long time and worked very closely with international breeders to select our cherry varieties. It’s been a very long process to source the best genetics for the best site that don’t need the very long cold winters of traditional varieties.”
The availability of modern cherry genetics has revolutionized cherry growing in South Africa.
“We start in Worcester – it’s not at all cold in Worcester, but we’ve developed a site there where we can grow cherries because of the genetics and the way we farm,” she explains. “A simple example is we’ve lifted the irrigation up so that after the harvest we can irrigate from the top to stimulate a bit of freshness because we don’t get rain in Worcester in the summer.”
The cherry crop from Worcester is soon joined by the Warm Bokkeveld orchards and then the orchards at highest altitude in the Koue Bokkeveld.
State-of-the-art cherry packing facility
At Dutoit’s cherry packing facility, inaugurated last year, six tonnes of cherries are packed per hour.
On 1 November Cherry Time™ online orders opened for South African cherry lovers.
"Please allow for a four to eight day lead time: It takes up to a week to process your order and ship our precious cargo to you as if you’d just picked them off our trees," says Runei Kotze, brand and media coordinator at Dutoit..
"We deliver to your door in most of Western Cape, selected areas in Gauteng or Durban. Please visit your local Pick n Pay stores, some locations will have ASAP delivery!"
For more information:
Runei Kotze
Dutoit Agri Cherry Time™
Tel: +27 74 968 5168
Email: [email protected]
https://cherrytime.co.za/