Our area was predicted to experience a summer of below normal precipitation and above normal temperatures. When fruits and vegetables are needing favorable growing conditions, these predicted weather outlooks are not so good to receive. It’s been a very dry last few weeks. The new trees planted this Spring were beginning to show stress so it was necessary to water them. Watering trees is by no means as beneficial for them as is the natural watering by rainfall. However, it is vital to keep new plantings from “stress” as the trees establish their root systems. Thus, the rains today were very, very welcome.
The frost, more accurately, the freeze, in late April did damage the apples. We were waiting for “June drop” to occur to make a better assessment of what varieties and how many apples survived those freezing temperatures. Glad to say, our healthy trees produced enough second blooms and the honey bees were out and about pollinating those blooms, so our trees should produce a favorable harvest. Not all varieties fared as well as others but overall we should be able to offer our customers a fine selection of fruit.
We have had several calls and questions regarding what we call “June drop.” The backyard grower is sometimes puzzled when they see fruit that was developing and then it suddenly just drops to the ground. Sometimes the ground beneath the tree is completely covered with fruits about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter. Fruit dropping in this manner is nature’s way of eliminating inferior or excess fruit. Nature knows its limitations and this “dropping” prevents the tree from having to feed or carry more fruit weight than the branches can support. Developing fruit that was not properly pollinated will drop at this point and this was what we were waiting to see happen. We were unsure if the second blooms were pollinated and how many would “stick” and mature into good fruit. As previously stated, this process is referred to as “June drop” but the discarding could happen as early as June or as late as July depending on the growing region.
All in all, the damages done in the April freeze were not as devastating as it looked at the time. It was rather disappointing to see our orchards in beautiful full bloom one day and those same blooms totally brown the next afternoon. The only thing that can be said about all that is, “that’s the fruit business.”