If Washington’s 129-million-box apple crop took you by surprise last fall, consider this. If there hadn’t been hailstorms throughout Washington State during the growing season, there could have been 12 to 15 million more boxes by harvest, observes Lindsay Buckner, senior vice president for fruit procurement and grower services at fruit processor Tree Top, Inc. Add to that the volume of apples culled from the crop and sent to processors (about 18 percent of the total), and total apple ­production in the state could have been 177 million boxes. A survey of Washington nursery tree sales that Buckner compiled last […]