The severe cold snap early this month proved to be fatal for apple orchards around the state, including locally grown apples.
April was looking good for local apple growers. The apple trees were going to have a good year. The trees were in full bloom and the fragrance of apple bloosoms was heavy and thick in the air — then the unexpected happened. A hard freeze, which lasted multiple days, struck...apple blossoms were killed, taking any hope of a bumper crop with it.
At The Orchard, which is owned by Bob Karr, what’s left of the blossoms are now brown and crisp. The crumpled up blossoms litter the ground near the apple trees, which have green leaves, but no hope for setting apples this year. Karr lost nearly 100 percent of his crop, except for a few trees. Karr’s orchard has about 100-150 trees per acre and about seven to eight acres devoted to fruit.
Karr cut open a blossom and pointed out that the inside of it was brown...an indicator that the blossom will not set fruit this year.
“(After the freeze) we were just waiting to see what would happen,” Karr said as he walked between rows of trees in his orchard. “As days went by, it just got worse and worse. The (blossom) clusters you just touch and they fall off and the ground is just littered with little would have been apples.”
Amy Jordan, a horticulturist at the Lyon County K-State Research and Extension Office, walked with Karr at his orchard Monday evening.
“The foliage is looking good this year,” Jordan commented as she touched leaves on a nearby apple tree.
Karr said the apple crop was not insured. He will just have to cut his losses. He said he usually opens a roadside stand during apple harvest time, but he probably won’t even do that this year. Karr said he cannot remember having a freeze of this magnitude so late in the season.
He pointed out that it wasn’t just his apple trees that were affected. The plum and pear trees also were bitten by the frost and won’t be producing fruit. It was the same story by these trees too — dried up blossoms scattered all over the ground near the trees.
“The blackberries were burned too,” Karr said. “The pear trees, the blossoms are just crisp.”
Karr said he still has his cow/calf operation to run and he will still maintain the trees this year, there will just be no fruit.
“It does put a crimp (in the budget),” Karr added.
Even though the trees won’t set fruit, there is some good news because the tree won’t have to spend energy producing fruit, Karr said.
“The tree will be more vigorous,” he said. “We do expect to bounce back. The trees will remain more vigorous than probably we want them to.”
At Hetlinger Developmental Services Inc., the story is much the same. Hetlinger has a 30-year old apple orchard that they recently started tending. Last year, the orchard was so successful, boxes of apples were stored in hallways and in trucks because there were so many. This year was supposed to be good too, said Tamie Vahsholtz, marketing coordinator at Hetlinger.
Jordan also visited the Hetlinger orchard.
“All of the new blooms have fallen off and the stems are turning black,” she said as she looked up at a tree. “This was such a once-in-a-many-years occurrence.”
But, upon closer look, some of the trees still had a few buds...there may still be hope for a few apples, she said as she pointed out several “baby apples.” The apples that are produced will be larger because the tree isn’t sustaining as many apples.
Hetlinger holds an Apple Festival each fall. Vahsholtz said no matter what happens to the apple crop, the festival will go on this fall as planned.
“We will still have some apples,” Vahsholtz said. “The festival will be bigger and better than last year, just without the bumper crop.”