Nova Scotia is starting to harvest its smaller crop of apples this season following a summer of severe drought conditions. "In some cases trees are dying where no irrigation had been installed in the orchards and land is light," says Michael Van Meekeren of Van Meekeren Farms.
In the province, farms are often not necessarily equipped with irrigation systems given the heavy soil and rains are generally plentiful. "So a lot of people had to borrow or find some kind of overhead irrigation system that is normally used for fields and place them in the orchards to irrigate wherever possible," he says. "It's difficult to borrow that kind of equipment because everyone who has it needs it. People were trying to get a few inches of water into their orchards to give the trees a slight bit of recovery. We irrigated at the orchard for two days and it seemed like the water only really went two or three inches into the ground."
High-Brix crop
In turn, growers in the region are anticipating an overall apple harvest with a reduced volume of high Brix, high flavour apples that may be a bit smaller in size. That said, that high Brix will make for good-tasting apples. While the harvest has begun, growers may also wait to begin given the fruit size is not there, even though the apples are ready. "We hope a little rain might fall on us but there's nothing in the forecast," adds Van Meekeren.
© Van Meekeren Farms
Van Meekeren says Nova Scotia growers are anticipating an overall apple harvest with a reduced volume of high Brix, high flavour apples that may be a bit smaller in size.
Notably, this all follows a spring bloom that was rainy and growers had thought there would be lots of fruit. "We were thinning a lot to make sure that we had a good balance on the crop," says Van Meekeren.
On varieties, McIntosh, Ambrosia and Honeycrisp seem mostly affected by these growing conditions. "Ironically the Pazazz crop looks like the best it has ever been. Pazazz is a very big apple normally and they will not be as big as they normally are but that creates a perfect size for the market," he says.
Concerns over apple trees
While a smaller apple crop is the short-term effect of the dry summer conditions, there's concern overall over tree health given that some trees are dropping their leaves and even dying. The health of those trees will be seen over the next two years, and tree loss is one of the bigger financial concerns for Nova Scotia apple growers.
Meanwhile the market for Nova Scotia apples is starting off strong. "As we come off of last year, it was a shorter supply so we have a lot less fruit in storage to deal with compared to other years," says Van Meekeren. "So it's a good aggressive start. We understand there's a big crop for all of North America, so we'll see how that goes."
It's expected that pricing could come down over time once the harvest is complete and apples are in storage. This follows last year's anomaly of a year which saw higher prices and lower supply.
For more information:
Michael Van Meekeren
Van Meekeren Farms
Tel: +1 (902) 678 2366
[email protected]
https://givethemawink.com/