Orchard owners anxious about record temps

While many Eastern Iowa residents have welcomed the early spring warm up, orchard owners who depend on a good apple crop this fall are worried.

Abnormally warm weather this time of year could put the crop at risk if temperatures then drop to freezing or below in the coming weeks.

Chris Gensicke said he and his father, Steve, who own and operate Allen's Orchard on North 10th Street in Marion, said many of the 33 varieties of apple trees at their five-acre orchard are budding weeks earlier than normal.

“Once we get to here, it's just a matter of time until it opens up and we start seeing green,” he explained, pointing out a tree in the “silver tip” stage of budding.

Gensicke said apple trees may show green leaves in a week - the flowers then turn into the fruit a week later. That's at least a full month, if not more, ahead of a normal spring schedule.

“The worst case scenario is we have a week, two weeks like this, and they blossom out. Then late April, early May, we have a freeze that destroys our entire crop,” Gensicke said.

Orchard owners could lose everything if overnight temperatures drop to 25 degrees F. a month from now, he warned.

However, if warmer weather stays around without a late April or May, then the apples could ripen a month earlier than normal.

And that, too, would present some challenges.

Allen's Orchard depends on what's sometimes called “agri-tainment” for about a third of the yearly sales. For the orchard, that means allowing families to wander through the groves and pick their own apples.

If a good portion of the apples are ready to pick in August, the Gensickes wonder if the students will be out in the usual numbers when school starts.

Some apple varieties that mature naturally in August might be ready this year in July.

In 2005 trees budded on schedule, but an extreme cold snap in early May wiped out 90 percent of the state's locally grown apples.