WALDHEIM, Sask. – Dry conditions are bad news for almost everyone but fruit grower Mike Noel.
Less moisture is what he needed to send his Prairie Sensation apple trees into dormancy last fall. Instead, August rain tricked them into continuing to grow, resulting in severe winterkill on a four-acre field near the North Saskatchewan River.
“There was not enough time between the heavy rains in August and the hard cold in October,” said Noel, who grows and processes apples, cherries, plums and raspberries with his wife, Anne, at Petrofka Bridge Orchard near Waldheim.
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Deer damage and a foot of snow combined to cause more headaches for Noel, who will have to buy apples from others to make cider this year.
Growers attending the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Association’s annual field day June 21 received advice on how to deal with such calamities.
Former Saskatchewan fruit specialist Clarence Peters said Noel’s orchard sits on a plain near the river in a protected area that traps the frost. The high water table prevents the trees from properly hardening off in fall.
“At some point the water’s going to kill you,” he said.
Peters said a hillside location with good drainage might offer a better location for growing fruit.
Letting the grass grow late in the season could also help remove moisture from the ground.
Rick Sawatzky of the University of Saskatchewan’s plant sciences program peeled a strip off the tree to reveal black markings, a telltale sign of winterkill.
“Those trees died because they did not get ready for winter,” he said.
His recommendations for saving the trees included root pruning and pruning trees back to the live green parts, which are visible by peeling back the bark.
Sawatzky also suggested starving the environment of moisture by allowing grass to grow closer to the trees or planting another species between the trees.
“You’ve got to break the cycle and try to restore balance,” he said.
“Apples are not native and have no way of knowing that the days are getting shorter.”
Noel said he is considering planting haskap, an increasingly popular species that is day-length sensitive and could offer an alternative to apples.
“It will not solve the problem but will help the situation,” he said.
Other options include using abscisic acid,
a natural plant hormone that helps harden off tissues and induce dormancy.
Noel transformed his lush riverside farm from grasslands to orchards over the last few years, noting adequate moisture eliminated the need to use drip irrigation lines for the last two years.
The riverside location is a “wildlife highway” so Noel has fenced his orchard and plans to use two dogs to police the area.
He is pleased with past production and is not discouraged by the latest setback.
“I will move on and carry on.”
