Extreme Weather

The weather played out like an epic novel, but were there heroes in this tale.

Regardless of the kind of fruit a grower was involved with in 2015, the biggest story was the weather. Sure, weather is something producers always talk about, but when May and June produced record lows in rainfall, it’s really the only story and one that ranges from being a best-selling memoir to a hack’s poorly written thriller.

Just 11 millimeters of rain fell in Vancouver in June and high temperature records were broken all over the province in what went down as one of the hottest and driest springs in the province.

The Book on Berries

The first fruit story to unfold is always strawberries and this year’s tale saw the size of the berries go down slightly while yield and flavor were about average according to Jeff Husband, one of the directors with the B.C. Strawberry Growers Association.

Husband, who is a second generation strawberry grower notes, “We had about 80 days of non-measurable rain. I think it was the driest year on record.”

Like most growers’ fields, the day-neutral or everbearing crops at Husband’s Emma Lea Farms in Ladner didn’t have irrigation, but the season stretched out slightly longer than usual, which he feels is how growers were able to get their yields on par with average years.

“The flavor was still good,” he says. “Firmness was good if the berries were handled properly and cooled right away.”

The heat put pressure on the plants, but pests didn’t take too much advantage of the situation. The spotted wing drosophila (SWD) was an issue as it has been in previous years, but overall, didn’t create too much drama if growers put in the work of regular spraying and field monitoring.

“Thrips were the pest of the year,” Husband says.

The rusting thrips cause on strawberries was an issue for many growers, but overall yields weren’t impacted too much for those who worked with integrated pest management (IPM) programs and sprayed regularly for the pest.

Husband reports acreage in strawberries has remained consistent from last year, but is seeing a shift to more day neutral fields within the overall acreage.

Raspberries were no lengthy novel this year. In fact, the berries didn’t even make it past being a short story. Grower Arvin Neger, chair of the B.C. Raspberry Industry Development Council described it as a short quick season that lasted only three and a half weeks.

“As far as I can remember, this was the quickest season we’ve had,” says the fourth generation raspberry grower.

The winter wasn’t kind to the raspberry tale. Like an over-written villain, the cold season was harsh enough to cause winter damage to plants, but didn’t deliver the cold snap required to push SWD numbers down. Overall, the raspberry yield is expected to be down by 25 to 30 per cent compared to 2014, which was a high year for yield. This puts estimates by some growers at about 20 per cent below an average year.

“Some packers and processors are estimating between 11 and 12 million pounds,” Neger says of the expected volume of raspberries. There were 18 million pounds in 2014.

The story of a poor yield began to unfold in the spring when buds weren’t coming on the plants.

“Overall, coming in the spring of 2015, they had significant winter damage,” notes Neger. “The buds would just not come out. It was a good indication in early spring that the crop would be down.”

Certain farmers were hit harder with winter damage than others but growers in general pushed with fertilizer and additional care to increase plant health and vigor. It simply wasn’t enough to get the crop to standard levels. Then, like a distasteful romantic comedy where insult is added to injury, the hot, dry summer prevented the berries that did form from growing to their usual size.

“The berries just did not get the size this year,” Neger says. “In some cases, some of the berries got sunburned.”

Fortunately, growers that followed their spray and control programs kept SWD under control and didn’t find larvae in their fruit.

“If growers fell behind in their programs, they had a higher probability of larvae,” notes Neger. “Some farmers may have found that their mite population was a bit higher.

As Neger explains, the SWD monitoring process may increase mite pressures.

“I can foresee it to be a problem for the future,” he says.

The market is strong for the berries, according to Neger, pushing prices for 2015 higher than they were in 2014. He adds that raspberry acreage is expected to stay the same for 2016 if not slightly higher than that of 2015.

For blueberries, perhaps the biggest story was a foreign one, with the approval of blueberries into China with the late June signing of agreements. Chinese inspectors were on hand through August to complete protocol processes which are still not yet wrapped up. It became obvious, with the hot dry spell and extended protocol visits, there wouldn’t be a 2015 shipment of blueberries to that new market.

Expectations from Debbie Etsell, the executive director of the BC Blueberry Council, are that the yield for blueberries will come in at about the same level as 2014, which was 152 million pounds. The weather did of course have an impact this year in moving the season up sooner like a spoiler ending in an Agatha Christie mystery.

“Our biggest impact was that we were three to four weeks early,” says Etsell. “Depending on the region. [The season] ended that much earlier too.”

While B.C. blueberries didn’t make it to China this year, fewer made it to local markets as well.

“Grocery store programs are set up well in advance,” Etsell notes, explaining how programs selling blueberries kicked in later than local harvests.

Additionally, the weather left berry plants thirsting for more water.

“We never thought in B.C. that we would ever be having problems with water issues,” Etsell says. “We used to sort of smugly laugh, we’ll never be like California.”

“At the beginning of the season Duke was definitely stressed and there was variability in the sizes of the berry,” notes Etsell in terms of berry quality. “But as it got to Bluecrop and the later crops, it was almost as though the bushes adapted better.”

Berry quality and size seemed to improve as the season moved along into the late season varieties even with the continued dryness and heat.

Fortunately, pests weren’t a major issue in blueberries, Etsell said. “There wasn’t anything out of the norm.”

Blueberry plants may have produced well in the 2015 season, but the heat of summer and lack of water left plants stressed, putting into question what will happen in the 2016 season. Etsell says most plants made it through okay, but many are under greater pressure than usual to bounce back to usual vigor making next year’s bud set a concern.

Cranberries seemed to have the best story, not unlike an inspirational read. Brian Mauza, an agricultural scientist with Ocean Spray of Canada noted the cranberries came into bloom earlier and had slightly different timing, with an overall expectation of being up in yield for the year by about 15 per cent.

“It [the long hot summer] had a positive impact for us,” Mauza says. “Because it started so early it gave us great pollination. The pollination season was excellent, we had very good fruit set. Yields are up. Individual fruit size is up and the chemistry is higher than usual.”

With early blooms starting the story off, it’s no surprise that some varieties of cranberries were ready earlier than usual. Mauza says the season as a whole wasn’t pushed off its usual schedule much however, even with the weather favourable to cranberries.

The slight shift in timing saw changes in pest management as well, but because IPM programs are longstanding there were no major pest issues.

“Our IPM scouts caught it,” notes Mauza. “Probably because we’ve been following our IPM program for so long it was easy to stay on top of it.”

 Mauza doesn’t anticipate much shift in the volume of acreage planted in cranberries, but states a number of growers are renovating their fields. These renovations consist of removing old plantings and old varieties in favour of newer varieties which offer greater yield levels. Ultimately, growers hope to see a higher yield from the same volume of acreage planted.

Tree Fruits Create an Early Story

The tree fruit story is like a re-write of the berry story. The weather took the starring role and left questions in the margins about the overall health of trees for the 2016 season. Chris Pollock, marketing manager for B.C. Tree Fruits notes the weather caused an early start for harvest across the board.

“It started with cherries and went in to apples,” Pollock says. “It was about one to two weeks early. Obviously with an earlier start date it can result in some challenges in terms of maturity.”

Apples were part of that both good and bad story.

The crop is expected to be down in yield according to Fred Steele, president of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association with pears following in much the same vein.

“I think it’s probably going to end up around 30 per cent [down],” he notes.

Fruit size of apples was also down due to the heat and the push that weather put on shortening the season. While Steele did find some farmers with the biggest apples they’d ever grown, the majority seemed to struggle with the size of their fruit. He felt it was dependent on the location of the grower’s orchards.

“The season got off three weeks early and nobody really caught up I don’t think,” says Steele. “I was picking apples in August.”

He notes the way the apple story would play out was already written in the early spring with an April pollination schedule.

“I knew we were going to be in for it,” he comments. “Bees were brought in in the third week of April. Normally it’s around the second week of May so you could see it right there.”

Steele says things just didn’t get any easier for apple growers in the 2015 season.

“Sometimes you’ll have a weather incident that will put it [the season] back on timetable and that didn’t happen this year,” he says.

With the fruit ripening early, the annual Kelowna Apple Triathlon in mid-August had apples from Winfield as opposed to the normal supply of fruit from much further south.

“We didn’t have those traditionally cold nights that snap the maturity of apples,” Pollock says. “But then it was like a switch went off when we were done [harvesting] peaches. As soon as peaches were done… the cold nights started to come. We didn’t have the frost issues and we didn’t have the rain issues.”

The challenges the weather threw at apple orchards didn’t end there. It played out like a clichéd dark and stormy night. There were issues with heat scorch, forest fires and accompanying wind storms as well as the stress the high heat put on the trees themselves.

“An apple tree at 40 degrees plus, if you have successive days, the tree will literally shut down to save itself,” Steele explains. “Then of course we had the forest fires which created huge wind storms, the likes of which I have never seen here in Oliver.”

He describes trees blown over, stakes broken off in the ground and to him, what looked like a tornado went through certain orchards.

It may seem like the apple story is filled with nothing but bad news, but here is where the tale turns around for the happy ending. Steele notes the industry grew for the first time in 32 years.

“We put more apples in the ground this year,” he says. “The industry stopped shrinking.”

The majority of the plantings were of new varieties including ambrosia, honey crisp and pink lady as part of the seven year replant program.

“It’s based on a grower’s business plan,” Steele says. “There’s a whole criteria for the support [of the replant program], judged by qualified horticulturalists. That dovetails with where this industry is really growing. New varieties that are more profitable, they are also higher density.”

Steele describes these higher density varieties as those that can produce more than 50 bins per acre where older varieties may have produced 25 to 30 bins per acre. Like the replantings in cranberries, this means a higher yield from the same acreage making growers more profitable.

He sees this as part of the growth into other markets like Korea.

“They want Canadian fruit and they want B.C. fruit in particular,” Steele says. “We’re positioning ourselves to be able to take care of that over the next five to seven years as tariffs come off. We’re going to be ready.”

Pollock sees the numbers of specific varieties (the same noted by Steele) growing in the coming years: pink lady, ambrosia, honey crisp and other new varieties.

“It’s a slow process and it can be an expensive process,” says Pollock. “We need to look three to five to ten years ahead.”

Cherries too saw themselves as part of an interesting story that played out like an edge-of-the-seat crime drama with a good yield, but challenges along the way.

“It’s definitely one of the largest crops we have had,” Pollock says.

The estimated yield is over 10 million pounds this year compared to about 8.5 million pounds in 2014. Like the other fruit stories, it all came sooner.

“Normally cherries, the last variety is picked on the Labour Day weekend,” Steele notes. “They were pretty much done in the middle of August.”

Steele says the cherry crop was filled with mixed results depending on where the orchard was located and when the fruit was picked.

“Some did suffer from the heat,” says Steele. “Cherry heat stress wasn’t a major problem. They, like everyone else in a heat year, suffered some issues. It came upon them fast.”

Cherry growers, like apple growers, are looking towards the future with an increase in plantings due in part to the replant program.

Summer fruits had a slightly lower yield than last year, but with 2014 as a high year for peaches, apricots, plums and other summer fruits, 2015 may be considered as average in volume in their story.

“Some of them had problems due to the heat,” Steele says of the softer fruits. “But it wasn’t nearly as bad as people thought it might be.”

Pollock reports there were few pest challenges for tree fruit growers.

“We don’t see a lot of pest challenges here compared to a lot of parts of the world,” he says. “Our growers do an excellent job of managing that.”

Another highlight Pollock sees is the reversal of the trend of taking fruit trees out and planting grapes.

“It’s really positive news for us and the region,” Pollock says. “It’s safe to say that trend is reversing.”

All tree fruits are expected to have some stress from the extreme weather conditions, but it is uncertain what this means for the 2016 season until spring and bud set.

“My thing is be optimistic,” says Steele. “We’ll deal with that when we get there.”

The story of B.C. fruit in 2015 was an interesting one led mostly by the weather. A mix of factors kept growers on their toes and made the tale a page-turner right to the very end.