If Washington's 129-million-box apple crop took you by surprise last fall, consider this. If there hadn't been hailstorms throughout Washington State during the growing season, there could have been 12 to 15 million more boxes by harvest, observes Lindsay Buckner, senior vice president for fruit procurement and grower services at fruit processor Tree Top, Inc. Add to that the volume of apples culled from the crop and sent to processors (about 18 percent 01 the total), and total apple production in the state could have been 177 million boxes. A survey of Washington nursery tree sales that Buckner compiled last year shows that growers continue to expand their orchards. The volumes of tree sales for planting in 2013 and 2014 are the highest since he began doing the biennial survey almost 30 years ago. The survey is based on sales data from seven major commercial nurseries that sell a high percentage of trees in the Pacific Northwest. More than 60 percent of the trees sold for planting this spring wereGala, Honeycrisp, or Fuji.
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