Below freezing temperatures on the Brushy Mountains Tuesday night and Wednesday morning heavily damaged this year’s apple crop, but orchardists don’t yet know the full extent of their losses.

Orchardist Ty Lowe of the Pores Knob community said he realized late Wednesday morning that the damage wasn’t as complete as he thought earlier today, but he said it’s still severe.

Lowe said it looked like possibly as many as 20 percent of the buds on apple trees in most of his orchards survived, but that it would be at least three weeks before he really knew.

An apple tree can produce a full crop with only 10 percent of its fruit buds, but Lowe said having so few buds at this point in the season greatly reduced the likelihood of a substantial crop.

Most of Lowe’s orchards are at elevations more than 2,000 feet above sea level. In those areas, he said, the temperature dropped below freezing about 11 p.m. Tuesday and was still below freezing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. It reached a low of 27 degrees.

Lowe said orchards at lower elevations appeared to have had less severe damage because it wasn’t below freezing for as long there.Lindsey Deal, with orchards at lower elevations mostly in the Sugarloaf community of northern Alexander County, said the temperature wasn’t below freezing more than two hours in his orchards, which was from about 5-7 a.m. Wednesday. The low was 28 degrees.

“I’m sure we had some damage, but the jury is still out on just how much,” said Deal.

“We’ve got a late bloom and I’m too old and have seen it too many times where it appeared the damage was bad but we ended up with apples,” he said, adding that having a late bloom helped. He said he thinks he still will have apples and peaches this year.

Nearly all apple varieties on the Brushies were either in or just past full bloom.

Most of the orchards in Alexander are at elevations below 2,000, which often is too low for them to have the “thermal belt” of warm air that often settles over much of the Brushy Mountains and protects orchards from freeze and frost.

Deal said orchards in Alexander are often shielded from the wind by being on the south side of the Brushies, which he said was the case Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

The thermal belt wasn’t present at higher elevations Tuesday night and Wednesday morning because of the wind, with gusts as strong as 40 mph.

Glenn Weston of AH&W Farms in the Little Rock section of Boomer, a diverse operation that includes apples at elevations below those of Lowe and Faw, said he’s sure he had damage but added that it’s too early to say how much.

Gray Faw, an orchardist in the Brushy Mountain community, said rain Tuesday made matters worse because fruit buds absorbed the water, which led to damage when the water froze. Continuous rain (or irrigation) during a freeze is needed for water to insulate buds.

Peaches are a substantial part of Faw’s operation and he said there was no question his peach crop was completely wiped out.

The last time Brushy Mountain orchardists had severe damage from cold was from the “Easter freeze” in 2007. “We were in full bloom then and it got down to 19 degrees and didn’t get above freezing for 30 hours,” said Lowe.

Faw said it could be as much as a month before the full extent of the damage to the apple crop is known because some fruit buds develop later than others on the same trees.

Orchardists determine the extent of damage by examining buds. The pistil, which is the stem growing out of the center of the flower, should be green. If it’s brown or black, the bud is dead and won’t develop into fruit.

Considering 2007 was the last year with major damage to the Brushy Mountain apple crop, said Faw, “we’ve had a good run.” He said he expected to still produce and sell pumpkins and tomatoes this year.Faw, Deal and Lowe are among orchardists with crop insurance. They said the insurance is expensive, but it helps get them through years when most or all of their crops are lost due to weather.

Faw said that if he’s going to lose a crop, he’d rather lose it early in the season instead of later after he’s already spent a large amount of money on spraying and other work involved with producing a crop of apples.

Even in a year without a crop, he added, a certain amount of spraying and other work is needed to maintain apple trees for crops in coming years.

Source - http://www.journalpatriot.com/