Frost threatens early blooms

By James Haggerty, Staff Writer

Published: March 26, 201

Paul Brace turned from a blooming plum tree, took a few steps and pinched an emerging bud on a nectarine branch.

“Everything is a month early,” said Brace, whose family has operated a 140-acre orchard about 6 miles northeast of Dallas since 1828. “Nothing compares with this. It is, like, once in a hundred years.”

Backyard gardeners and outdoors enthusiasts may be thrilled by the mild weather and early emergence of magnolias, tulips, forsythia, hyacinth and other flowers. But fruit growers look at a larger window of danger from a hard frost, like the one expected tonight, which could affect some crops.

“Usually, we are worrying about getting through 10 to 15 days,” Brace said. “Now, we are worrying about two months. This is crazy.”

The region’s winter went into the record books as the warmest ever, with average daily temperatures running 7 degrees above normal, according to the National Weather Service. Spring began last week in overdrive, as fruit trees started blooming far earlier than usual.

“It doesn’t even seem like we had a winter,” said Bruce Pallman, a partner at Pallman Farms, a South Abington Township poultry and strawberry operation. “Everything is just way, way early.”

It is common for the region to experience temperatures in the mid-20s at least through April and subfreezing conditions can wipe out fruit production. Fruit trees are most-susceptible to frost when they are flowering, which lasts up to four weeks on some trees.

“I’m pretty sure this will be the earliest bloom, going back at least to the early 1900s,” said Ian Merwin, Ph.D., a horticulturist who specializes in tree fruit at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “We are definitely in a very risky situation right now for the fruit crop in the whole Northeast.”

He recalled a similar situation in 2007 with disastrous results. After a spell of warm weather in March across the Midwest and the South, temperatures in early April plunged 10 to 20 degrees below normal for two weeks. Severe frosts causedmore than $1 billion in agricultural damage and devastated apple, peach, winter wheat and alfalfa crops.

“Tree fruit growers are nervous,” said John Esslinger, a Lackawanna County Cooperative Extension educator. “There is nothing they can do about it.”

Actually, some measures can limit potential frost damage. Brace’s Orchard will buy a propane-fueled frost-guard machine to protect up to 12 acres of its 100-acre apple plot, Brace said. Pallman said straw covering the berry plants at his family’s farm probably will be removed over the next week and irrigation would protect the crop in subfreezing weather.

If no killer frost occurs, an early bloom could be beneficial.

“There is potential to have a really good crop,” Merwin said. “This is not necessarily a bad thing,” Esslinger said. “The problem is, what if we hit 26 degrees in a week or two? We are sunk.”

The unusual situation also creates a labor scramble at orchards. Many operations still need to prune, spray and plant trees.

“It has definitely goofed up the schedule,” said Robin Peregrim,whose family operates Miller’s Orchards Farm Market, a 110-acre operation in Scott Township that produces apples and pumpkins. “We just have to take it one day at a time.”

Advanced blooms also signal potential early fruit. Brace said he may be picking Honey Crisp apples in mid-July, about six weeks ahead of their typical emergence in early September.

“We are so early, we are going to be before market,” he said. “It’s so abnormal, you can’t even fathom this.”

jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com

FORECAST

It will be freezing in Northeastern Pennsylvania tonight.

“It certainly does look like it will be well below freezing,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Brian Edwards said Sunday, adding that NEPA can expect it to stay well below freezing for 8 to 12 hours between 8 and 9 tonight and 8 and 9 Tuesday morning. And, Edwards added, temperatures will get “well down to near 20,” during that several hour period.