Bad Year for Orchards
By Brandy Nance (Contact)
Originally published 12:49 p.m., September 19, 2007
Updated 12:50 p.m., September 19, 2007
Amy Jordan, a horticulturist with Kansas State Research and Extension in Lyon County, looks over Bob Karr's orchard after April’s late freeze. The freeze doomed the county’s 2007 apple crop.
A freeze in early April spelled disaster for local apple growers.
Before the freeze, which lasted several days, apple trees were looking good. Fragrant blooms filled the air. Everything pointed to a good apple crop.
But those dreams were not realized. Blossoms dried up and fell off trees, leaving no hope of making apples. By late April, the ground next to apple trees was littered with dried up blossoms — each one represented a lost apple.
The Orchard, owned by Bob Karr, suffered a total loss. The Karrs, though, are facing reality and looking forward to next year.
“The trees did fine but (we had) no fruit,” Karr said. “They formed good blossom buds, which they do in June, July and August. We got good blossom buds for next year.”
Karr said minus a warm week in March and the cold snap in April, it’s been a good growing season.
Karr said The Orchard didn’t open at all this year. The business usually does some retail sales with goods such as honey and barbecue sauce, but Karr said it’s too hard to compete with grocery stores with only those items.
A knife tip used to cut a cross section of an apple blossom points to the damage done by the freeze. The trees are healthy and should produce a crop next year.
“The real reason we open up is for the fresh fruit,” he said. “We decided to chill this year ... it’s a downer, and I hope that our customers won’t forget us with this year gap.”
Karr said he took a teaching job at the college to supplement income because of the fruit loss.
“You do what you have to do...” he said.
The apple orchard at Hetlinger Developmental Services is in the same situation. The 30-year-old orchard had a bumper crop last year and had so much stock it stored apples in hallways and trucks. This year, Hetlinger experienced a total loss.
“Initially we thought we were going to have some” apples, said Trudy Hutchinson, executive director of Hetlinger. “But we do not have any.”
Hutchinson said Hetlinger will still have its annual Apple Festival despite the lack of apples.
“We’re just not going to sell apples,” Hutchinson said.
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