Fickle weather in California delayed its cherry crop last year, setting up a complicated marketing scenario for Washington’s bountiful crop.

Tim Kovis, director of communications for the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, said the cherry harvest of 16.1 million 20-pound boxes for the Pacific Northwest was up about 33% from the 12 million-box crop in 2022.

“Unfortunately, the cherry crop was of phenomenal quality, but Northwest and California cherry crops were on top of each other, which caused pricing issues. Returns were not as much as hoped for after a couple of bad years,” Kovis said.

California had rains that pushed its crop into late May, June and even early July.

“They were still in the market when we came to harvest. It was very problematic,” Kovis said.

“It was a rough year due to the market,” Kovis said.