Indiana’s Apple Crops Are Not Doing Too Hot

  

With early frost and drought the apple crops aren’t  doing to good.

Early frost causes worst apple harvest since 1930s by Carson Gerber, Kokomo Tribune

PERU — Jason McClure drives down row after row of barren, empty trees on his family’s apple orchard in northern Miami County.
At this time of year, the more than 5,000 trees at McClure’s Orchard and Winery should be heavy with fruit ready for harvest. Instead, there’s only dry branches.
Finally, McClure finds a tree with a handful of small, cracked golden delicious apples.
“That tree should be loaded down right now,” he said.
Even though there’s hardly any apples on the tree, he called it an “anomaly” within a devastated orchard that has produced the worst apple crop in recent memory.
The devastation started back in March, when unusually warm weather lured buds to open a month earlier than normal. Then in late April, two nights of deadly 26-degree temperatures frosted the trees, wiping out virtually every budding apple in the orchard.
“It was a total decimation,” he said. “A lot of people think the apples were lost in the drought, but the drought really didn’t affect this crop. We didn’t have any apples to herd even before the dry weather hit.”
But he said the hot, dry summer took its own toll. The few apples that did manage to grow were small and stunted. When rain finally fell earlier this month, McClure said the apples couldn’t handle the excess moisture and cracked open.

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