The Pacific Northwest region’s bumper 2009 cherry crop should have come as no surprise, says Lee Gale, technical consultant with Northwest Wholesale, located in Wenatchee, Washington. The spring of 2008 was so cold that Washington growers spent more money on propane to heat their orchards than in many years previously, and supplies ran out. “We had weeks and weeks of cold weather,” Gale recalled. “We had a crop that picked out at 1,000 to 3,000 pounds per acre. It was horrible.” Because of the small crop, growers didn’t use gibberellic acid, which set the trees up for a large crop […]