East Oregon Cherry Crop Bit Again By Fall Frost

“Nobody expected this,” cherry grower Vern Rodighiero told the East Oregonian following a freeze last November.  “We’ll just have to rebuild. A lot of areas will have to start over.”

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An additional year off of production has taken a toll on growers and producers in the Milton-Freewater, OR, area will likely not see a crop until 2017.

According to the East Oregonian, there are only 650 acres of cherries, but the area is also blooms and is harvested earlier than the The Dalles, which can net growers in the region approximately $4.5 million.

“This was probably the most devastating freeze I’ve ever seen,” Clive Kaiser, Extension horticulturist for Oregon State University, said.

The cold snap last November set in so quickly, it was devastating to trees not in dormancy at the time. Some growers lost significant amounts of trees.

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“Each one of these orchards is going to take a lot of man-hours. It’s a disaster, we know that. It’s something you live with and try to do the best you can,” Rodighiero says.

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