UK stonefruit growers are hoping for a vintage season this year, thanks to excellent growing conditions and burgeoning consumer demand.
Nick Marston, managing director of marketing desk Berry Gardens, said: “We are expecting a big cherry crop this season. Growers are still putting more trees in the ground year on year and using Gisella rootstock, grown under tunnels and with drip irrigation. This means that output is more reliable and yields are much greater than with an outdoor-grown crop.”
Marston is expecting output to double on last season’s frost-struck campaign. He said: “Early sites in Kent started at the beginning of July, about 10 days early. Those sites are pretty well finished now and the crop on typical sites in the south of England is about halfway through, while Hereford is just starting now and will carry on until the beginning of August.”
At Norman Collett, business development manager Sarah Calcutt is also expecting a vintage year for stonefruit. The company supplies English cherries, plums and even apricots to the UK multiples. She said: “We have some really great fruit and have had an excellent growing season. Last year, the trees did not grow much fruit so they were not stressed, because they got frosted and then it rained in July. Then we had a good, cold winter so the trees went into dormancy and some cold days in the spring, so they woke up slowly. Then in spring, no rain and warm gentle breezy conditions were ideal for pollination.”
These factors have also benefited the national plum crop, which last year was only about a quarter to a third of its usual size.
Opal is just starting its season as the earliest variety, before the calendar of availability switches into Reeves, Avalon, Jubileum, Excalibur, Victoria and finally Marjorie Seedling, which will see the season out in the third week of September.
