Rainy summer has taken a bite out of Maryland apple growers’ crop
One of Central Maryland’s rainiest summers on record has caused frustration for apple growers, who have seen more fruit rot and fewer days for harvest.
The harvest at Baugher’s Farm and Orchard in Westminster starts in July and doesn’t end until November as different varieties ripen, said Dwight Baugher, the orchard manager.
In his 27 years of farming full-time, Baugher said, “this has been my most frustrating summer because of weather.”
Rain has caused more splits, cracks and rot on the fruit than growers would like to see.
“We’ve had stretches where things have laid wet for eight or10 days in a row,” he said.
Baugher’s grows more than 25 varieties of apples on about 145 acres, from Early Gold in the summer through Pink Ladies and Gold Rush in late fall.
“The rain has caused a lot of damage to certain varieties of apples all over the East Coast,” said Bob Black, co-owner of Catoctin Mountain Orchard in Thurmont and a member of the Maryland Apple Promotion Board. “It will cause apples to crack because of excessive rainfall and the trees just taking up the extra moisture so quickly.”
“The most troublesome variety is one of folks’ most favorite, and that’s Honeycrisp,” he added. “We probably lost 50 percent due to cracking.”
When rain clouds blot out the sun, that changes the appearance of apples, too.
“The apples are just as flavorful. What sunshine means is color,” Baugher said. “That means a lot to us. … The American consumer wants pretty-colored and tasty.”
This year also has lacked the dry weather days needed to do the harvesting.
“It compresses an already [large] amount of workload into a tighter window,” Baugher said. “You can’t harvest in the dark.”
And when a greater percentage of the crop may be affected by rot or other flaws, “it just slows you down because you’ve got to be picky,” he said.
Black has heard of trouble with muddy fields from other growers.
"Some people have gotten stuck, some people sliding down hillsides, making it just a very challenging harvest,” he said.
He said Catoctin is doing pick-your-own, which works out well to bring the public to the orchard but is also affected by the weather.
"Nobody picks in the rain, including our pick-your-own folks, so we lost several weekends,” Black said.
He was thankful that Maryland has been mostly skirted by hurricanes. In addition to bringing extra water, the high winds can blow apples off trees or even snap a tree full of apples in half.
He said an apple farmer’s dream weather would be a half-inch to an inch of rain every Sunday night, with sunshine the rest of the week to get the harvest in.
“Folks who are not really in tune with farming will say to me, ‘Oh boy, aren't you glad for all this rain?' and I said ‘Not every day,’ ” Black said. “You have to be able to perform certain tasks, whether it’s picking, pruning, spraying. … Every farmer has been impacted by the weather this year. And it's not over yet.”