Late July Progress Report

It has been a very good sweet cherry season but it is winding down. As the Northern Michigan residents can attest, it has been raining a lot. The sweet cherries would have more splits after each rain. We had almost two inches early this week and we are throwing in the towel. We have only about 25 trees yet to pick and we are putting the fruit on sale while it lasts. Note that the diligent picker will pick 20 cracked ones or more for each nice one, so it is not possible to pick any volume in a reasonable amount of time. It was still one of our best sweet cherry seasons ever and thanks to all of you who were able to come out.

The Montmorencies are coming in beautifully now and this picking is very easy. U-pickers are encouraged to go to the best fruit and not to worry about cleaning the tree. The u-pick season will come to a close when we come through with the cherry shaker and shake the fruit that the u-pickers left behind.
Apricots have been hard to predict but I will stick my neck out and say that we will have lots to pick starting August 1, going at least a week and most likely 2 weeks. Apricots do not ripen all at once on the tree so u-pickers are advised to seek the fruit with the most orange color usually out further on the branches. Stone fruit like apricots do not add sugar after they are picked so green fruit will soften and the taste will improve some but fruit that is left on the tree will be sweeter and juicier.
The first two weeks of August should be great raspberry picking. There are waves of berries that are ripening.(slowly due to cool weather).
Peaches and Nectarines are probably 12 days off at least, maybe more.
Soon we will start talking about apples.