US: Maryland growing an early crop this spring
And as a result they have had to adjust work schedules and routines, sometimes on the fly.
“Trying to guess when things will be ready has been very difficult this year,” said Linda Lewis, who, with her family, owns Lewis Orchards in Dickerson.
For growers, the premature arrival of many fruits has meant longer work hours, in part to head off possible frost damage, extra efforts to get out the word that the crops were ready for market and dealing with pests earlier than usual.
Among the crops ripe and ready to buy are apricots and black raspberries, a month ahead of schedule, and a peach variety known as Spring Snow, which usually is not ready to pick until June 30.
Asked when she last saw peaches ready to harvest three weeks early, Lewis said “never” in the 30 years she has helped with the family’s orchards and fields.
Across the state, strawberries were at least two weeks early, said Julie Oberg, spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Agriculture.
In Washington County, Leroy Tracey of Mountain Valley Orchard said strawberries, red and black raspberries and peaches were ready to pick two to three weeks ahead of their usual dates.
“We have people coming here for pick-your-own strawberries, but we shut it off this week,” said Tracey, an owner of the orchard.
Growers and scientists said the unusually warm winter seems to be the reason for the early crops.
But the premature appearance of many fruits also is raising the inevitable questions about climate change and possible long-term implications.
Growers said they could draw few big-picture conclusions except that weather patterns “cycle.”
And, National Weather Service meteorologist Howard Silverman said, “It’s important to make the distinction between climate as a long-term issue and climate records, which are a near-term concern.”
In the short term, temperatures at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall and Dulles International airports have averaged about five degrees warmer than normal all year, except in April, which was close to normal, and March, which averaged more than 10 degrees warmer than usual.
Both airports got about 18 inches less snow than is average for the season, which “is an indicator of how warm it was,” Silverman said.
As a result, strawberries bloomed in March for Baugher’s in Westminster, where the Baugher family operates orchards, a fruit and farm market and a restaurant.
Although conditions have given Baugher’s a five-week strawberry season already, Dwight Baugher said the early bloom in March had him in the fields for long hours to make sure the plants were protected from possible frost.
Already, tart cherries are ready or ripening, a week or more early, growers said.
“The problem now is getting the word out to customers,” said Gene Kingsbury, whose family’s Kingsbury’s Orchard farm stand in Dickerson opens Friday. Like other growers, the Kingsburys moved up their opening date more than two weeks because produce was ready.
Kingsbury, too, has ripe peaches and said he expects later varieties also to ripen two to three weeks early.
Customers should figure that fruit will be ready up to two and half weeks earlier than usual, he said.
Perennial crops are most affected by warm weather because their life cycle runs through winter.
“I don’t think there will be any strawberries for Father’s Day,” said Susan Butler of family-owned Butler’s Orchard in Germantown, where strawberry picking began May 11 — early by 10 days to two weeks.
But Butler said dad might enjoy blueberries which are ready now — roughly eight days ahead of harvest time last year.
In Anne Arundel County, blueberries also were picked this week, about two weeks early for that area, said Dave Myers agricultural extension director for Anne Arundel County.
Later-season tree fruits, such as pears and apples, likely are to be early as well, but probably not by as much, growers said.
Early blooms on apple and pear trees have made them susceptible to fire blight, which can take the disease’s characteristic black ooze from the buds through the vascular system of a tree and kill it, said Mike Newell, horticultural crops program manager at the University of Maryland’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Wye Research and Education Center in Queen Anne’s County.
Annual crops, which are planted from seed every year, should not be affected by the warm weather early in the year because they did not go through winter, growers said.
Peas, for example, look like they will finish at about the same time as usual, Butler said.
However, statewide pea harvests are closer to complete this week than they were at the same time last year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report.
Yet, sweet corn is “going into tassel” in Montgomery County fields and likely is to be ready to eat by the Fourth of July, eight to 11 days earlier than usual, Lewis said.
In Wicomico County, farmer and market owner Mike Harcum said he expects to pull sweet corn as much as two weeks early.
But the warm weather also has brought corn worms in early, Harcum said.
Source: www.gazette.net