'Awesome crop' of cherries, early harvest looks likely

By Gianina Schwanecke of RNZ

It’s shaping up to be an early harvest for some cherry growers, though the threat of El Niño hangs over the upcoming harvest.

Cherries destined for consumers before Christmas are nearing harvest, with picking set to start in a few weeks.

Mike Casey grows cherries north of Cromwell and said they looked like green marbles at the moment.

He expected to start harvesting cherries before Christmas this year – about a week or two ahead of schedule.

He said this was largely because it was one of the warmest springs in over a decade, which had also made for a great quality crop.

“It’s been great for bringing the trees on early,” he said.

“We had reasonable chilling hours. We had really good pollination days.

“We now have quite an awesome crop on the trees.”

Casey said the fruit’s final quality would be determined by the impacts of El Niño before harvest.

“Is it going to be wetter for us, which will be damaging for our cherries, or is it going to be nice and dry, in which case we could be expecting one of the best seasons in quite some time?”

He said an early harvest suited his export-focused business, with most of the cherries destined for overseas before Chinese Lunar New Year sales, which is also a few weeks earlier, on February 6 next year.

“It’s going to be a really good quality export crop this year if everything goes our way.”

Meanwhile, Simon Bishell of Caythorpe Farm in Marlborough grows about 4ha of cherries near Blenheim, alongside a vineyard, sheep and arable operation.

His cherries are destined for the domestic pre-Christmas market.

He expected to start picking at the end of November as usual and said this year’s crop was of average size.

“This year, particularly [for] some of our earlier varieties, the weather was a little bit changeable at the earlier start or earlier piece of flowering.

“So it’s sort of been replicated through in the amount of fruit that is set.”

Bishell said it was too early to tell what the final harvest quality would be like as cherries are a “very fragile crop” vulnerable to rain damage.

“We hope for a nice fine, settled weather period leading into harvest, and we can ensure that we have a nice supply of good quality summer fruit available for Kiwis to enjoy this summer.”

This story was first published on rnz.co.nz