Deep snow keeping apple producers from pruning trees

With snow several feet deep lingering in many Kings County orchards, a long-time apple and pear producer in Woodville is getting quite concerned.

Farmer Keith Boates said quite a bit of fire blight showed up last summer on apple trees following the powerful winds of post-tropical storm Arthur. The affected limbs should be removed to prevent further spread but pruning is a challenge with so much snow.

“We have to deal with a lot of it quickly this spring,” Boates said, pointing out that he could “only see a quarter” of some of their apple trees protruding from the snow when he took a look at the orchard on April 9.

“It’s going to make us extremely busy really soon,” he said.

Another concern is mice. Boates said they’re great breeders and, if there’s a high population this spring, there won’t be much food to go around. Sometimes they’ll resort to eating apple tree bark, which can cause a lot of damage. They could be stripping bark beneath the snow.

“We don’t know what’s going on down there,” Boates said. “We’re planning to watch very carefully.”

Boates has also had trees damaged by ice in the past. Snow can freeze to trees, particularly when followed by freezing rain or rain. When it starts to melt, “it can prune the trees for you”, tearing off small, tender limbs they don’t want to loose.

Trees likely healthy: horticulturalist

Perennia horticulture specialist Chris Duyvelshoff said it hasn’t been a particularly harsh winter, so he isn’t concerned with apple tree health in that regard.

“The concern is more on the management side of things,” he said. “People will have to prune later.”

Although he can tell from the red faces of some of the producers he deals with that they have been out in the sun pruning trees, many are having a difficult time accessing orchards because of the lingering snow depth.

This might result in several producers not getting as much pruning accomplished as usual. Some, such as Boates, are trying to remove as much fire blight as possible, he said.

Duyvelshoff said grape producers are in a similar situation with pruning, as vines are still beneath snow. However, buds usually don’t break out until later in May so there’s “still a lot of time to get there.”

Late blossoms likely

Duyvelshoff said the late spring and could mean a slightly delayed bud break on apple trees. It’s temperature-driven though and, if temperatures warm up, “we could catch up in a hurry.”

The annual Apple Blossom Festival runs this year from May 27 to June 1.

“That would actually be slightly later than average for our bloom date,” he said.

Over the past decade, the average date of full bloom for apple trees has been May 25. Unless there is a prolonged period of cold weather in late April or early May, “we should have blooms for the Apple Blossom Festival.”

Duyvelshoff said good records have been kept on full bloom dates at the Atlantic Food and Horticulture Research Centre in Kentville. The date of full bloom for apple trees was May 30 last year. In the past 20 years, the latest full bloom date was June 5. The latest on record was June 13, 1926 and the earliest was May 15, 2012.