US: hot, dry summer tough on late-season crops

DeMoss Pumpkin Farm is awash with oranges, reds and golds, signaling the onset of fall and harvest of the year's final fresh produce. Dick and Letha DeMoss feel fortunate. Despite two months of hot, dry weather in the summer, their raspberry patch and tomato plants still are producing. Pumpkins and all sorts of squash - butternut, spaghetti and acorn - cover tables and hayracks on the couple's central Iowa farm. There's also lots of bittersweet, gathered from sites in the wild that the couple, like most enthusiasts of the colorful woody vine, will not disclose.

This fall, Iowa's cornucopia is a mixed bag. Apples are in abundance, but other late-season horticultural crops struggled with disease, drought and other problems. Some farmers have raised pumpkins that are smaller than usual, and a few have no pumpkins to sell. Others have had trouble growing tomatoes.

"The heat gave us problems on some crops," said Hank Tabor, professor of horticulture and Extension vegetable specialist at Iowa State University in Ames. In some cases, fungal disease that plagued pumpkins years ago has become resistant to certain fungicides. "There seems to be a resistant strain popping up," Tabor said.

Fruit and vegetable production in Iowa pales compared with row crops. The value of Iowa's commercial apple crop, for instance, is usually about one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. total, even though Iowa apples typically sell for two to three times more per pound than the national average. By contrast, Iowa farmers are expected to produce 19.4 percent of all corn and 15.9 percent of soybeans to be harvested this year in the United States.

Most Iowa-grown fruits and vegetables are sold directly to consumers, through farmers markets, subscription-farming operations, roadside stands and off the farm. Hoopes Farms, south of Muscatine, for instance, used to sell fresh produce to wholesalers, but now the fifth-generation, family-owned business sells most of its products directly to consumers, said John Kiwala, whose wife, Holly, is a descendant of the farm's founders.

"If I can just keep it close, I can sell more melons in Muscatine and get them" to consumers, Kiwala said. Tabor and other Iowa horticultural specialists believe there will be plenty of pumpkins, squash and other fall fruits and vegetables this year.

"Pumpkins, by and large, are having a pretty good crop," said Maury Wills, head of the agriculture diversification and market development bureau with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in Des Moines. Dryness during planting in some areas of Iowa caused problems for pumpkin producers, but for the most part, he said, "the pumpkins seem to have caught up."

Berry Patch Farm near Nevada, like other central Iowa farms, could have used more rainfall this growing season. But with the help of irrigation, the farm has produced "excellent crops" this year, said Judy Henry, who runs the business with her husband, Dean, and their son, Mike. Because of dryness, the Henrys did not plant pumpkins and instead bought some in northern Iowa, so they would have them to sell this fall.

Tomato production this year has varied widely across the state, depending upon growing conditions and varieties. Old-fashioned varieties generally performed better, because they flower throughout the growing season, unlike the more commonly planted commercial varieties that tend to flower all at once. "They left just about as quick as they came on," Wills said of the tomato crop.

By contrast, the Iowa apple harvest is expected to be more than twice as large as last year, when hard freezes in early May hit the crop. "It's a real bumper crop as far as apples go," said Patrick O'Malley, commercial horticulture field specialist with ISU Extension in Johnson County. Wilson's Orchard, near Iowa City, has been harvesting apples since July 6.

"We've had a heavy load of apples," said Joyce Wilson, who runs the business with her husband, Robert "Chug" Wilson. "We have harvested more acres, and we have sold more apples than we've ever had before." The Wilsons, who established the orchard in 1980, also raise gourds, butternut squash and various varieties of pumpkins. Those crops also have been bountiful, Joyce Wilson said. The biggest drawback this year: excessive rainfall. "It was a challenge to keep the weeds down," she said. "We had rain all too often."

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