Apple crop in Iowa takes huge hit from spring frost

Iowans will have a hard time finding an Iowa-grown apple this fall

A late frost the first three days of May killed most of this year's apple crop throughout the state, several growers said. Some Iowa apple orchards will not open this fall or will close months before they had hoped.

"We got wiped out," said Bob Alpha, who, with his wife, co-owns Appleberry Farm in Marshalltown. No creamy crisp Cortlands.. No tart Jonathans for baking. And none of those heavenly Honey Crisp apples that are worth a 10-month wait.

It's all due to the precise timing of that May storm. Alpha said his orchard had the most prolific bloom he had seen since the late 1980s, thanks to the warm weather in late April.

But with temperatures in the low 20s the beginning of May, the blooms turned brown. Now, 90 percent of the apple trees at Appleberry Farm have no fruit on them, he said.

"It was sickening," said Diane Gravert of Gravert's Apple Basket near Sabula in eastern Iowa.

"The trees were full of blooms and they just froze right off. They got hammered. You walk down the rows and there's nothing there," Gravert told the Associated Press.

She intends to post a sign, "Please come back next year." Pretty much all of Iowa got hit by the frost, said Lynette Fevold, co-owner of the Apple Ridge Orchard in Iowa Falls.

"We're going to take a nice financial hit," she said, estimating losses between $50,000 to $70,000. "It'll make for a tighter Christmas," she said.

It was 24 degrees at 1 a.m. one of those early May mornings, Fevold remembers. The problem was that it stayed in the 20s until 5 a.m. "That's such a long period of cold," Fevold said.

From their 17 acres of apple trees, Fevold said they usually pick between 4,000 and 5,000 bushels. But this year, there might not be enough apples to take to the wholesale stores or to make cider with, she said.

"It's hard on your customer base," Fevold said. Customers should expect to see fewer varieties and possibly a little higher price, she said. Some varieties may sell out sooner.

An apple wipeout of this magnitude is quite rare, Fevold said. She could recall only the Armistice Day freeze in 1940, when a major ice storm killed a majority of the apple trees throughout the state.

Fevold said she doubts anyone will lose trees from this year's frost, but apple production was severely hit.

The frost will have more effect on Iowa orchards than on consumers seeking their favorite apple varieties at the grocery stores this fall.

Dick Rissman, produce director for Dahl's supermarkets, said some orchards bring in their excess crop, but the stores do not depend on local growers.

"For the stores, its not too much of a situation" that the Iowa apple crop was nearly wiped out, he said. "It's a pretty minimal effect."

Even during normal crop years, the percentage of apples sold at Dahl's stores that are from local growers is small, he said.

In the past, Iowa farmers provided more apples to the grocery stores, but the orchards are smaller now and supermarkets don't depend on them, Rissman said.

Fevold hopes that the pumpkin and gourd crops will carry Apple Ridge Orchard through the fall months, but "I doubt we'll be open past Christmas." In previous years, the grower has stayed open through part of January.

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