WILLIAMSON, N.Y. (WROC) — From blossom to harvest, apples are sensitive to every shift in the weather — and this season has thrown a little bit of everything at growers. Between heavy rainfall and high heat, farmers are closely watching how their fruit is responding.
Still, one local farmer says the crop is off to a strong start – even if the weather has brought some challenges.
“The apples actually look great this year. But we’ve had a ton of extra rain. And now this recent heat, it’s created some problems for us, but otherwise, the apples look fantastic,” said Jamie Sonneville, co-owner of Lakeville Orchards.
That extra heat and rain may be good for growth, but they also open the door for pests, bacterial infections and scab – a disease that damages the skin of apples and makes them harder to sell. But those aren’t the only threats growers are facing.
“Fire blight is something that can attack the tree. And within a year or two, it can kill the entire tree. And the most difficult thing about fire blight is, you can try and cut it out, but it doesn’t necessarily remove the problem, and it spreads very easily. So with additional wetness and wind, the fire blight can move through the orchard really quickly and take out a huge portion of your crop,” Sonneville said.
To stay ahead of these risks, growers are sticking to strict spray schedules – but more extreme weather means more frequent treatments, higher input costs, and a greater demand on equipment and labor.
“One of the things that conventional apple farmers do is we have to spray, we have a regular spray schedule to help mitigate all of these risks. And one of the biggest problems when you have additional heat and additional rain, is just the increase in the amount of applications you have to put on, which means a huge increase in your input costs. Additional laborers. You have to make sure your equipment is always working because you’re spraying more than you typically would,” said Sonneville.
Growers say they’re keeping a close eye on the sky — because the biggest threats may still be ahead. For the next few months, farmers are hoping for calm skies and steady temperatures to carry them through. The crop is looking strong so far — now it’s just a matter of making it to the finish line.
“You go through, you know, you start in April with your application. Come as you go through hand thinning, you go you pruned them, actually, even before you start spraying all the way through to cultivating that crop to get to be the most perfect piece of produce, and they get stripped off the trees with one hailstorm, you could also have a terrible windstorm that could knock over trees, knock over your trellis system, or rip apples off. And also those hail storms, even if the hail is not terrible, if it damages the leaves, that makes that particular tree more susceptible to pests and diseases. Just because the leaf has an entry point,” said Sonneville.
With harvest season still weeks away, farmers say there’s time for the crop to either bounce back or even take a hit — depending on what Mother Nature sends their way next.
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