TRAVERSE CITY — Tougher-than-usual weather conditions are likely to blame for this year’s low cherry harvest across the region and throughout much of Michigan, local growers and research experts say.
A late spring frost and an exceptionally wet start to the summer months have decimated much of the state’s tart cherry crops and many sweet cherry varieties are feeling the effects, too.
According to growers across northwestern Michigan, weather conditions and orchard locations have played the biggest part in many variety yields, where one farm may report a lower harvest and a neighboring farm reports moderate to record-breaking yields.
Nikki Rothwell, a Michigan State University Extension specialist and coordinator with the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center, said cold temperatures in mid-April were enough to damage some cherry tree buds.
“That’s why the crop is really variable this year — we’ve got growers that have decent crop and then we have growers that have … really nothing,” she said Tuesday.
This year’s harvest estimate for northwestern Michigan is approximately 40 million pounds — or 22.2% of the typical 180 million pounds regional growers usually produce, Rothwell said.
“It’s quite low,” she said, adding that the west central Michigan region is also deeply affected, estimating roughly 4 million pounds this season compared to about 60 million pounds harvested last year.
The orchard’s location, as well as what stage of development the trees were in, affected Montmorency tart cherries the most, King Orchards’ Vice President Jack King said. The family-owned farm located in Central Lake grows a variety of cherries over 140 acres, as well as apricots, peaches, summer plums, nectarines and donut peaches.
“It’s our largest acreage of a single crop,” King said of this year’s Montmorency harvest. “Those really got froze out this year and it’s not just me, it’s across the state, everybody up and down the coast saw serious damage in the Montmorency tart cherry.”
The Montmorency variety is particularly fragile, King said. Once out of hibernation, the variety freezes easier than others and suffered following the particularly cold and wet spring season.
“Even though we had a really spectacular bloom and the bees were flying, those blossoms didn’t seem to be viable even at that point,” King said.
The orchard is still producing some Montmorency cherries, he added, but not nearly as much.
“You can find cherries, but really, you’re seeing only a hundred on a tree that might hold several hundred pounds of cherries in a peak crop,” King said. “It’s pretty heartbreaking to us tart cherry growers.”
Another tart cherry variety grown at King Orchards — Balaton cherries — are producing a little better so far, King said, estimating roughly 30% of a full load. Sweet cherry production has fared better, he noted, though some varieties still showed up bare.
The farm grows between eight to 12 sweet cherry varieties, King said.
“About 75% of my varieties are carrying a really good load,” he added. “It gives us enough fruit that there’s a lot out there, but it’s not so much that it stresses out the tree … so the tree can put energy into all the cherries.”
The successful crops taste that much sweeter given the rough weather since summer began.
“(It was) extremely wet with very violent rain and that creates a lot of cracking in the cherries and it lets the different kinds of mold and fungus kind of get a foothold … mold loves sweet cherries so much that it’s hard to stop,” he said.
The wet summer season has been tough on orchards across the region, Wunsch Farms CEO Isaiah Wunsch said Tuesday, with heavy rain frequently pushing fruit-bearing trees and soil to their limits.
Wunsch is also an agribusiness consultant for Third Coast Fruit Co., a sixth-generation, family-owned orchard located on Old Mission Peninsula. The operation specializes in fresh sweet and tart cherries, with apples harvested in the fall.
Wunsch acknowledged tart cherries are in limited supply for processing this season.
“From talking to a lot of growers in Leelanau, Grand Traverse and Antrim (counties), and even downstate, it’s a tough year for tart cherry growers in Michigan generally,” he said.
The farms are in what Wunsch describes as an isolated micro-climate that was only a few days behind the rest of the state when the spring’s cold temperatures clipped many crops.
“Our cherries were still pretty dormant at that point,” he said, noting the crop load appears normal compared to previous seasons.
The extra rain has proven more difficult to manage, however.
“I think it’s been a total rollercoaster ride for us this year,” Wunsch said. “It’s going to wind up being right around average, maybe a little bit better for us.”
The farmer quoted recent weather data that shows the region has received approximately 40% more rainfall than normal this month.
“I don’t know if everybody notices that, but farmers certainly do,” he added. “It’s been a much wetter July than normal, which actually kind of ruined our mid-season cherry varieties.”
Those varieties, such as the Ulster sweet cherry, have historically been the staple of the farms’ fresh cherry offerings and are popular for processing.
“That variety was really hit hard by the wet weather,” Wunsch said, noting some earlier and later varieties have still produced their first meaningful production on new orchards this year. “The remaining orchards that we have left to harvest are looking really, really good.”
The wildfire smoke that blanketed Michigan over the last week was yet another hit to orchards and farms across the state.
“We’ve tried to limit the hours that we’re spending in the field,” Wunsch said. “The smoke didn’t really impact the crops at all, but it was for all of us who were working out in the field and I think it definitely discouraged people from coming out.”
King agreed, noting the orchards saw a few slower days during the worst of last week’s haze. Many regional orchard workers wore masks.
while completing tasks outdoors and operated in shifts.
According to MiAir — the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s air quality monitor — the air quality index (AQI) levels peaked on Monday, reaching the “unhealthy” range at AQI 154 in Traverse City. Conditions have since improved, with statewide air quality clearing up by Tuesday.
M-88 road washouts following recent heavy rainfall also made it tougher for visitors to reach the orchard, King said.
“We’ve never seen rain like this,” King said. “(But) this is farming – dealing with Mother Nature and rolling with the punches.”
Rothwell acknowledged that the variable success in different varieties isn’t the worst the industry has seen, but there are still weeks left for harvesting and the region isn’t out of the woods yet.
“My advice to growers — and they know this — they just need to get the fruit off the trees,” Rothwell said. “Anything we can do to move this harvest along, it’s better for the growers so they can get those cherries in and the quality stays high.”