PLAINFIELD — The apple orchards of the Upper Valley thrived this year, and a warm fall has made apple-picking an especially popular activity.
Growers did see challenges, with humidity bringing on disease and low yields among some late-blooming varieties. Still, they agreed that it was an above-average year.
“We had good bloom and good pollination, so there were tons of apples. So if you lost a few due to fire blight or scab or rust, you had tons of other apples,” said Steve Kuligoski, at Mt. Pleasant Orchard in Grafton, N.H.
Wet conditions in July gave moisture-loving diseases room to thrive. And the continual rain would wash away the spray Kuligoski applied just days before, forcing him to spray his 850 trees repeatedly. He does all of the labor in his orchard himself.
For the second year in a row, he also contended with fire blight. The contagious bacterial disease infects the tender green leaves on new shoots, then creeps downward below the bark, leaving young quarter-sized apples to wither and die.
Despite some loss to the blight, this year was a success at Mt. Pleasant. Or as Kuligoski succinctly summarized it: “I sold a lot of apples.”
Paul Franklin at Riverview Farm described the abundant rainfall in July as a “double-edged sword.”
“It helped them size up, but made a moist environment for a lot of fungal diseases on leaves and apples,” he said.
Much to his relief, his trees made it through spring “unscathed.” In recent years, some of his trees have awakened from winter early, only to lose their blossoms to a frost.
About 10 years ago, 80-degree weather left his trees “(thinking) they were two months later.” Crop insurance helped him break even but could not make him whole. This year, though, he was pleased to have a “nice gradual spring” in Plainfield.
Like most in the Upper Valley, his orchard is heavily diversified, with abundant varieties offering a hedge against the one or two varieties that have a slow year.
“The early varieties seem to have done the best. But the Honeycrisp, about half decided to take the year off,” Franklin said.
Many apple varieties are biennial producers, with the energy put into a bounteous crop of apples drawing energy away from next year’s buds one year, and the tree reversing priorities the following year.
“Overall, it was a good year, and that makes us all wonder what next year will be like,” said Jeremy DeLisle, a field specialist at University of New Hampshire Extension. “Climate change is very much on all of our minds.”
This year, a warm and sunny fall tinged apples a vivid red, and customers have been eager to participate in an especially long apple-picking season.
“Mother Nature has been on their side as far as that goes,” he said.
With a frost yet to strike, some growers plan to extend pick-your-own into November.
“They’ve come through the rain just fine. We were very dry early, so during bloom period we were really dry, which was really good for disease management,” he said.
Trees are most vulnerable to disease early or late in the season, so growers benefited from dryer conditions in August. While it was an average year for apples statewide, there was “some really heavy bloom” in parts of southern New Hampshire, he said.
In a 2017 report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture detailed the impacts of climate change on apples in the Northeast. Some popular varieties lose flavor and color when there are high temperatures in late summer and early fall. Another risk is the “greater unpredictability in weather” — like the cold snaps that zap early blossoms.
All the way from the Hudson Valley to Maine, growers are harvesting apples later into the season than they did 20 years ago, DeLisle said.
With wetter conditions in the spring and early fall and drier summers, growers will need to adapt, he said. Irrigation and high-density growing may become more common in the orchards of the Northeast. Storage ponds can absorb excess water and save it for drier periods, he said. Several growers interviewed said that they contend with more insects and disease than they did in decades past, a trend that may continue with climate change.
DeLisle explained that densely planted orchards of 8- to 10-foot “dwarf trees” could make watering and applying fungicide to the trees less labor-intensive. New research may also help growers in other ways in years to come. Modern root stalks, for example, are resistant to fire blight, he said.
But for most growers, “it’s really about having a diversity of varieties in their planting so that regardless of the weather conditions or the consumer preference, you have a variety of harvest dates, cultivars, flavors and uses,” he said.
Barbara and Matthew Patch at Patch Orchard in Lebanon benefited from diversification this year.
A cold stretch in May brought temperatures as low as 24 degrees, which damaged the blossoms on the late bloomers. So while the Honeycrisp and McIntosh apples grew in abundance, the Empires and Idareds were in short supply.
More than anything, though, the rain “helped us tremendously,” she said. “We thought our apples were very well-sized, and we had a very good crop of the traditional varieties to put into stores.”
Claire Potter is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at cpotter@vnews.com or 603-727- 3242.