Apples, cherries and blueberries, oh my!!!!

Remember those balmy "spring" days we had in March this year? After an almost non-existent winter?
It was certainly one for the record books in much of the US.

Didn't really affect us that much?
Right?

Wrong.

The apple and cherry business suffered huge losses because of the weather extremes early this year......forget about apple and cherry pies...maybe...or be ready to pay dearly.
Maybe decide blueberries are your favorite.

A slice of blueberry pie may be easier to find on the menu this fall than a slice of apple or cherry pie.

Thanks to devastating frosts that hit Michigan orchards this spring, many apple and cherry growers may not even attempt to harvest the meager crop that survived, fruit processors were told

www.mlive.com...
At a local store selling Michigan dried sweet dark cherries from LAST year's harvest, the price has gone from a reasonable $24.99 for 4 pounds to $34.99 in the last few weeks...and that is last years fruit.

. “What goes for the tarts pretty much goes for the sweets,” he noted.

producenews.com...
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The tart cherry crop in Southwest Michigan is expected to be 5,000 bushels, a drastic reduction from last year's 152,000 bushels, according to the Michigan Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Association, which released the processors' report.

and

Michigan apple growers' harvest this year is expected to be less than 10 percent of last year's harvest, the Michigan Processing Apple Growers reported this week.

www.freshplaza.com...

I believe it.

We normally have a lot of wild black berries in the spring here. This year, they died (the berries, the vines are still there). Bad news is they only produce once a year in spring.

reply to post by DontTreadOnMe


I just bought 2 lbs of Bing cherrys at the store today. They were $3.99 pound. Not cheap, but at the save time, one of those seasonal fruits that I really do enjoy!

You are right about prices going up though! I try to stay away from processed foods and try to buy fresh fruit and produce instead of canned and frozen. It is quite challenging to a budget to buy fresh produce!

We also had a wicked spring that ushered in a lot of freezing temps at night that did a job on the blossoms of a lot of fruit trees!

The wild temperature fluctuations that are predicted to only get worse as a result of the warming climate will likely hurt large-scale, commercial agriculture quite a bit.


It's a banner year for wild fruit in the pacific north west so far, though.

Seriously. Best/most thimble berries, salmon berries and hucklberries i've tasted in years. But i know the commercial producers are hurting from this long, wet, cold spring/summer we are having.

reply to post by seeker1963


Oddly, we almost never see fresh Michigan bing cherries in the stores.
They range here from $2.49-$3.99 per pound....about the same as last year.
The shortage will be for the dried sweet and tart red....wait until you see how much a can of cherry pie filling is this fall

Yeah, you can't do cherries here at all, other than for decoration - they require cold weather to set.

However, the blueberries are really producing. The blackberries set early and were small and bitter. Citrus is doing well.

Berkeley, CA

My neighbor picked 20 pounds of cherries from their tree last week, I got a huge bag of them. They were excellent!

Their apple trees are coming along nicely as are their blueberries, plums and apricots.

My Sequoia strawberries are giving me nice treats for my breakfast cereal :-)

We have a huge blackberry bush in the back yard, coming along nicely and the ground cherry bush is full of berries just now getting ripe.

OK I am hungry now, time for dinner!

reply to post by berkeleygal

How cool that you have so much local fruit...I have a small stand of raspberries, but not much fruit that the birds aren't getting yet.....the bigger crop is in the fall.

Do you have the climate for citrus in your area?
And is this an issue for you yet??
www.abovetopsecret.com...

My tomatoes died this past week. The heat and lack of rain over this past week. I was out everyday keeping them watered but to no avail. I'll have to get some more and try again.

My strawberries on the other hand are keeping up. I kept watering them too, and even with all the heat and lack of rain they are trying to produce again.

Now I do have one tomato plant that has me.....raising my eye brows I guess I should say. It was not one I planted but some how came out of the garbage and is from a store bought tomato.

It's HUGE, very healthy looking and has acted like: "What heat?". I've got blooms all over it, and even though I'm ignoring it mostly, it's thriving.

I'm starting to wonder if it's a mutated thing from GMO!

I might wake up in the middle of the night with some rock singing plant straight out of Little House Of Horrors!

reply to post by eriktheawful


Yr tomato is probably not GMO. They dont reproduce. Often times tomatoes that have established themsevles overwinter from seeds will do better than ones transplanted.

Or

reply to post by stanguilles7


ROFL!!


I didn't even think about that movie (I guess when I saw it decades ago I blocked it out, hehehe).

If it turns out to be a Killer Tomato, I'll do my best to post pics!

reply to post by DontTreadOnMe


We do have citrus around here.
We have a small Myers lemon tree in a pot in the backyard, doing well and the neighbors on the other side have grapefruit that looks to be coming on well too.

Here in Northwest Florida my Satsuma orange has a goodly amount of oranges, but they will not be ready for harvest until December or January. It is a "local" variety that can withstand temps into the 20s (not that this winter had much of that !). However, this spring my wild blueberry bush was skimpy and the berries small and not flavorful. My domestic blueberry bushes did not have many berries at all. The winter may not have been bad, but the drought was terrible. Of course now we are getting all kinds of rain !