The Niagara-on-the-Lake tender fruit crop is almost completely in and reports are mixed on how well things went with this year’s yield.
Concerns were real among some growers in April and the first couple weeks of May when an early spring cold snap raised fears frost would damage early blooms and affect the summer harvest.
In the end, the frost did hit some areas of NOTL — now, with the apricot harvest complete and peach and nectarine nearing an end, it seems some did well while others were not so lucky.
“I’ve got a great crop,” said Scott MacSween of MacSween Farms on Lakeshore Road, talking about his summer peaches.
“All the concern I had in the spring about the bloom and all the cold weather, it’s been no problem.”
MacSween is going as far as calling his yield this year a “bumper crop.”
“And because we had that bloom that was early in the season, we are two weeks earlier in terms of our harvest,” he said.
Whether it is a plum or a cherry or a peach or a nectarine, every variety is 10 to two weeks early. Right now, I am picking peaches that usually I am picking in the beginning of September.”
Overall, the farm’s summer yield is “probably” up by 20 per cent more than an average year’s harvest, he said.
Not only is his crop a good one, he said the amount of rainfall his fields received this year — which wasn’t as much as in some southern parts of NOTL, where torrential downpours left a wake of damage — has left his peaches with a beautiful shape and weight.
“Because we had that rain we had really good size this year. The quality has been really good.”
Apricots take a beating
While nectarine and peaches have produced well enough, apricots seem to have taken a big hit.
“They did not do well,” said Sarah Marshall, manager of the Ontario Tender Fruit Growers.
“We barely had a crop at all. It was the frost that did them in.”
Apricots have a shorter growing season, said Marshall, and therefore didn’t have the stamina to defeat the ill-effects of the May frost as peaches and nectaries did.
Rene Schmitz of Palatine Roses and Fruits is reporting his apricots were down to almost half of a normal season’s production.
He feels lucky to have that much on the books.
“There has been a lot of farmers with absolutely no apricots,” said Schmitz, adding that his peach output this year is “OK.”
“We have a lot of peaches but it is definitely down.”
Schmitz, who has been farming in the area since 1997, said changing weather patterns, which could include frost and insect infestations, are playing a role in his reduced output.
“(The weather) is much more erratic than in the past,” he said. “You don’t get the deep winters anymore and there are more insects because of that — we know that.”
An example of an insect damaging to the fruits that Schmitz grows is the plum curculio, a beetle that runs amok on fruits like plums, cherries and peaches.
They lay eggs within the fruit and both adults and larvae feed from the inside, causing brown rot.
Like Dutchyn, Schmitz knows that despite loss of product from rain, insects, heat or frost, he will continue to produce the food the world needs.
“As a farmer, you look to the sky and see a thunderstorm and it wipes out your crop. You can’t be sad about it. You cry a tear, you dust yourself off and you keep going.”
Summer’s heat and rain not a good thing for everyone
At Dutchyn Farms in Queenston, owner Joe Dutchyn’s nectarine crop is down this year over past years.
The longtime producer has seen his share of growing seasons and reports that this year’s heavy rainfall in his area, combined with a heat wave that rolled through NOTL in parts of June and July, affected his crop’s growing process.
“A lot of our first pick of crops went to the ground because they had split pits,” he said.
“When there is too much rainfall and too much heat, everything rapidly grows and the pit splits.”
That split, he added, affects the stem, which in turn creates a hole in the fruit allowing water, and even insects, to get inside and the fruit.
“So you have to drop all of that to the ground,” he added, referring to a thinning process that discards unwanted crops.
Still, despite the lower-than-normal output on his farm this year, Dutchyn is taking a very pragmatic approach to his yield.
“Being a farmer, I am happy every year just to have a crop. This year, we had some issues, but overall I am pretty content.”
