US: fruit crops especially tender

Richard Masser, a fruit-grower at Scenic View Orchards in Sabillasville, points out red raspberry bushes that are budding early due to the unseasonably warm winter, at his orchard on Tuesday. Fruit growers in northern Frederick County breathed a sigh of relief last week when temperatures plummeted into the 30s and below, which is normal for this time of year. They had been watching the trend of warm, sunny days in December and January with anxiety.

If the warm-weather trend continues, growers said, fruit-bearing trees and vines are going to begin to think it’s spring long before April. Sap might begin flowing up from the roots and fill young buds with moisture.

‘‘When it’s normal, there’s no moisture in the buds,” said Richard Masser, a fruit-grower at Scenic View Orchards in Sabillasville. But with warmer temperatures, moisture that would normally be found in a tree’s or vine’s roots are now found in its young fruits, Masser said.

While January is off-season for the crops, the Scenic View Orchards farmers – the Millers, Calimers and Massers – stick to their regimen of feeding beef cattle, pruning fruit trees, shopping for new implements and doing taxes.

The farm has been in operation and in family hands for six generations. Originally a beef, wheat, corn and potatoes-for-chipping operation, the farm has begun growing garden vegetables and fruits in the last two decades.

Scenic View no longer produces potatoes for chips, Masser said. There’s been ‘‘no toughening stage” this year for his crops, he said.

And that’s exactly what growers, like Masser and Robert Black, 55, co-owner of Cactoctin Mountain Orchard in Thurmont, want for the next few months – cold weather that will ‘‘keep sap back down in the ground,” as Black said. ‘‘The trees must rest.”

Black, the second generation to tend the orchard, has always raised fruits, and in the last 20 years, he has expanded into vegetables. Some of his products are affected more by the warm weather than others. ‘‘I did see some movement in some summer plums,” Black said.

A variety of white peaches from California also seem to be budding early, he said. The growers want the temperatures to become normal – not too warm and not too cold – because fruit trees and vines will have to face the biting frosts that come with spring.

For now, the growers are resigned to doing nothing for their crops through February, except hope for normal temperatures. A ‘‘cold snap,” they said, would wreck a crop that has been kept warm during the winter. ‘‘I welcome cold weather, but not extreme cold weather,” Black said. The National Weather Service, though not forecasting a normal season, isn’t predicting such crop-killing weather, either.

‘‘The outlook was for above-normal temperatures” for January, February and March, said David Manning, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Manning couldn’t say how far above normal, and he couldn’t predict whether temperatures would drop into the zero-range ‘‘beyond a handful of days out.” It’s ‘‘beyond the scope of science,” he said.

The Farmer’s Almanac, which produces its forecasts more than a year in advance, predicted a colder than normal winter for Frederick County’s region. ‘‘It hasn’t come up that way,” said Janice Stillman, editor of The Farmer’s Almanac.

Stillman and the almanac are predicting a ‘‘double-dip winter” – two cold spells broken up by a warm spell. She said ‘‘it’s entirely possible” that February could be a very cold month, and that, so far, warmer temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are keeping winter temperatures above normal in the east.

Winter: Hawaiianor Siberian?

In a winter that hasn’t seen snow by mid-January, it doesn’t seem likely that temperatures will drop down into the negative teens. But that’s exactly what agriculture experts are most wary of. A rush of freezing temperatures after a long autumn could spell disaster for berries and stone fruits, such as peaches or cherries.

‘‘It’s pretty hard to put a greenhouse over 100 acres,” Black said. Masser, who raises strawberries, plans to blanket his crop in ice before the spring frost season to keep plants refrigerated but not frozen. Until then they’ll be under a thick cloth which can be penetrated by air and water.

‘‘They can take 32 [degrees], but they can’t take 28, Masser said. Fruits and berries are hardy, even when they haven’t been hardened by normal winter weather. Both north county growers expect to be selling ripe goods at farmers’ markets in the spring. ‘‘I have seen it twice in my lifetime,” Black said, referring to winters so cold his fruits didn’t grow. ‘‘We’ll be OK.”

Source: gazette.net