British Columbia cherries to arrive in late June

The first British Columbia cherries should hit the market by the end of June, says Richard Isaacs, commercial director of Global Fruit, Creston, British Columbia.

“The peak of the season will be from mid-July until mid-August,” Isaacs said in mid-May. 

Global Fruit will continue picking cherries into early September, he said, with ocean-freight arrivals to their overseas customers until the end of the month. 

Global Fruit’s cherry volume accounts for more than 30% of British Columbia cherry output, he said, with 30 cherry growers in the group covering over 2,000 acres. 

Every cherry-packing line for Global Fruit uses the latest optical grading technology, he said. Across its cherry group, the marketer has 72 lanes of Unitec Cherry Vision 3 technology, he said. 

Growing north of Washington state, British Columbia cherries ripen later than in Washington. British Columbia cherries take a bit longer from blossom to harvest, and with cooler nights the fruit is generally bigger, firmer and sweeter, he said. 

The 2023 British Columbia cherry crop is in good shape overall, though yields will be variable this season depending on location and winter cold damage. 

Most cherries that are grown in British Columbia come from the breeding program at Summerland in the Okanagan Valley, Isaacs said.  

A complete list of those varieties is available at the Summerland Varieties Corp. website. 

Some of those cherry varieties include lapins, Skeena, Sweetheart, Staccato, Sentennial and Sovereign. 

“[The varieties] are very happy in their in their native environment,” he said. “They came through the breeding program and were selected because of their high quality and because they performed best in the trial plots. And we're growing those cherry varieties commercially in exactly the same location that the breeder was selecting them so naturally, they cope well with the climate in B.C.” 

Global Fruit also specializes in late-season blush cherries, grown on its own farms, including rainier, Stardust and other later-ripening blush varieties.