OSU Extension Hosting 2018 Cherry Pre-Harvest Tour On Tuesday

OSU Extension’s 2018 Cherry Pre-Harvest tour gets underway Tuesday in The Dalles.  For the past 30 plus years, OSU has worked with local growers to bring in experts from around the world to talk about the cherry industry, and showcase the latest in varieties, technology and more.  OSU Extension’s Ashley Thompson says they will break the day into two parts.  The morning session, which gets underway at 7:45 a.m. at Dahle Farms will focus on sweet cherry cultivars, and rootstock innovation.

“Lynn Long, who is a long-time member of the OSU faculty is going to be discussing sweet cherry rootstock from the Michigan State University breeding program, we’re going to have Dr. Bob Anderson, talk about the new Pearl series, those are an early, most of them are an early season cherry, that ripen before Chelan, and then we’re going to have these new early season varieties from a breeding group called IFG.”

Second half of the day will focus on the soil health initiatives undertaken by Regional grower of the year, Mike Omeg.

“We’re going to be talking a little bit about cover crops, and orchard soil health, with some people from the NRCS.  I think they’re going to have some really cool demonstrations, to show you what you can do with cover crops, and with other soil health tools to really help you improve the health on your farm, then we’re going to talk about the advantage of cover cropping and grazing, and cherry replant situations, if you have a cherry orchard that you’re renovating, you may be interested in using something besides fumigation to renovate that soil.”

Lunch will be provided.

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