ALPINE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Many people have been enjoying the warm days West Michigan has seen recently, but apple farmers are starting to worry.
Nick Schweitzer’s family has been growing apples in the Sparta area for more than 150 years.
"Some of these Galas are starting to break and bud. There is a little green tip," Schweitzer showed FOX 17 Tuesday. "This is the earliest we have seen green tips."
He says a freeze could ruin this year's crops now that some of the trees are starting to bud.
"There's always challenges with weather every year. Some years — early, and others, such as this one, it's always concerning," Schweitzer explained. "A little more anxiety inducing because then we have to worry about cold mornings and watch the forecast a little bit more closely."
The green tips indicate the first stage of apple budding. Schweitzer says if they continue to sprout and the temperature dips below freezing, the cold could kill the blossoms and lead to no apples.
"This got the guys a little bit worried early on because it brings back memories of 2012," he said. "We had a complete crop loss that year. We had two weeks of, you know, 70-80-degree temps and that got tree development going early and put us farther ahead than normal."
Schweitzer says they lost about 90 percent of their apple crop in 2012.
"We only harvested maybe 100 bins off our entire farm that year, which was unprecedented. It was a weird fall since we really weren't harvesting any fruit that year," he added.
The danger zone for the buds is right before the flower starts to open. The longer it takes for that development, the better the chances of a good crop.
"We don't know what the weather's going to hold. It looks like maybe at least some stability in our temperatures coming up, so even though we're warmer than we would like to be, if we can at least keep it stable and not have huge swings up or huge swings down, then we might make it through okay," Theresa Sisung with Michigan Farm Bureau explained. "So, if we can, kind of, stabilize our temperatures to stay a little bit on the cooler side, it will slow that crop development down and then we can afford, you know, to get some of those colder days. But if we have huge spikes in temperature and the trees or the fruit moves along really fast, then we lose that ability to handle some of those colder temperatures."
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