Ron Weigel will have no peaches this year, one of a number of Illinois fruit growers who have been victimized by the coldest winter in years.

His Calhoun County orchard endured temperatures well below zero, fatal for sensitive buds.

“I don’t think we’ll have any peaches,” he said. “We have a lot of bud damage. We had minus 15 here. That will always kill them.”

It is the first winter loss in more than 15 years for Weigel, who has peach trees on 130 acres.

He certainly is not alone. Tom Schwartz, who grows peaches on about 10 acres at his orchard in Dix, also expects to lose his entire crop.

“It just took two or three bad nights,” said Schwartz, who added that he also recorded minus 15 at his Jefferson County farm. “It’s been cold for a long time.”

Location, Location

Elizabeth Wahle, a University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator, said the degree of problems with peaches is dependent on location this year. Orchards situated in a swath stretching roughly on a line from St. Louis through Vincennes, Ind., took the brunt of the damage.

“It’s not a complete wipeout, but there are some areas where they’re going to have significant losses,” Wahle said. “We don’t know the full extent yet, and we won’t until we get into bloom. There have already been some growers who have contacted their insurance companies and are declaring a complete loss.

“Right now, the area around St. Clair County is going to be affected; some rather significantly. Other areas in the Centralia area are probably going to see a reduction, as well.”

The rich fruit-producing region in deep southern Illinois, principally in Union and Jackson counties, may have escaped serious damage.

“Orchards in the Cobden area are probably looking fine right now,” Wahle said. “It depends on how cold it was. Those growers in the Cobden area aren’t seeing the same thing (as producers in more northerly counties), because they didn’t get as cold.”

Some areas in the southern part of the state’s major commercial peach-growing region were hit with temperatures as low as minus 5. But that likely was not cold enough to inflict major losses, Wahle said.

Many orchards across the Mississippi River from St. Louis were frozen out, getting hit with minus double-digit temperatures. Such frigid cold has the potential to harm peaches, which are not as winter hardy as apples.

The Manzanek orchard at Alma, in Marion County, also was hit hard.

“We had a wipeout this year; they’re all gone,” Charlotte Manzanek said.

It’s the second consecutive year the orchard has been slapped hard by Mother Nature, though last season the problem wasn’t frigid cold, but a particularly brutal spring storm.

“Last year we had a hailstorm here,” Manzanek said. “It hit the peaches and apples both. We lost more than half the crop, maybe 60 percent. We didn’t have any perfect peaches or apples. It was located right in this area. We had hail from golf-ball size up to grapefruit size. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Potential Problems

The real danger for the peach and apple crops still may lie ahead, if days get very warm and then a cold snap hits trees that have begun opening buds and setting blooms.

“If the trees have started the process of coming out of dormancy — where you can see active growth — they can be not quite as tolerant of cold,” Wahle said. “The minute you have bud break, their threshold is 32 degrees. Anything below that starts being a serious concern.”

That happened in 2007, a year in which record highs in March were followed by record lows in April. Virtually the entire Illinois peach crop was lost, as was a significant portion of the apple harvest.

Though temperatures in the low 20s were forecast for the week of March 23 in southern Illinois, they likely won’t be enough to create damage in otherwise viable buds.

“The trees are still dormant,” Wahle said. “If they had broken bud, they would be in extreme danger. We don’t want any below-freezing temperatures once the trees come out of dormancy.

“Once they come out of dormancy, apples are just as sensitive. Up to this point, we haven’t reached cold enough temperatures. We probably would need to get around minus 40 before even the most-sensitive trees would show some injury. They’re pretty cold hardy.”

Source - http://agrinews-pubs.com/