Local Orchards Say Apple Crop Doing Well So Far

While there were fewer apple blossoms this spring, Mike Cross, farm manager at Mack’s Moose Hill Orchards, said that’s a normal event.

“We all had a good crop last year and when apple trees have a lot of apples one year, they typically come back on the lighter side the following year,” Cross said. “That’s what the reason was. They spent all their energy making apples the year before and they didn’t have so much to make blossoms this year.

“The apples are already starting to size now,” he added. “Where there were blooms, there’s fruit, and where there was no bloom, you don’t have fruit. Overall it’s not too bad. It’s not going to be a bumper crop by any means, but it’ll be all right.”

Dan Hicks of Sunnycrest Farm said his trees had good blossoms this year.

“I don’t know if fruit set will be there, we won’t know for a couple of weeks yet,” he said. “We have what we call June drop, which is a natural occurrence that apples do – they’ll drop their fruit that isn’t pollinated or it might have been damaged in the spring. We’re still waiting for that to happen. Right now we have a pretty good crop, and Mack’s has a pretty good crop.”

Hicks said that he had heard from apple growers in the western part of the state that they may have smaller crops but added, “this part of the state looks good right now.

“And for us it definitely looks good,” he said. “We all trim every year to try to get a crop every year. Are we going to have a crop like last year? Last year was an incredible year and there’s no damn way we’re going to have a crop like last year.”

He said the Londonderry area apple orchards seem to have better crops than the rest of the state. “We’ll just keep our fingers crossed and hopefully it will hold,” Hicks said.

Wayne Elwood of Elwood Farms said that it was a “funny” blossom this year.

“Some varieties were fine, some came late this year. My crop is going to be down but I still should have plenty of apples,” Elwood said.

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