Some of you may find parts of this interesting- especially those of you in the humid region.
2023 End of Year Orchard Roundup
2023 may not have been a wonderful year globally, but for many of us, it was a fine year for growing fruit, at least at sites not damaged too much by the early February temperature deep dive that destroyed stone-fruit blossoms at a few sites we manage.
We only get a near perfect season about once every 25 years because we aren’t living in a Mediterranean climate where the skies dry up for most of the growing season EVERY GROWING SEASON and killing frosts are non-existent. Not that California growers don’t have their own set of problems. I was raised in the coastal foothills of S. CA and often suffered crop losses to ground squirrels and/or raccoons when I was first learning the ropes of managing fruit trees over half a century ago, but growing seasons were always sunny and dry, allowing fruit to obtain highest possible brix every year (if CA commercial fruit growers capitalized on that and grew the highest quality fruit they could, my own business might suffer, but they tend to pump up the weight of their harvest with too much irrigation and harvest it too soon) .
In California, drought was often on my mind, but here the problem is frequently too much rain, and in this respect, the 2023 growing season was a real dilly. Early spring was very promising being the first relatively dry one we’ve had for several years, but then the rains came… and came… and keep coming.
There was a brief reprieve in about mid-July into early August, but generally the flavor of fruit was watered down as the size of fruit was pumped up. Many of my Jonagold apples weighed well over a pound! Most of my July peaches were too bland to even bother harvesting although they were huge and beautiful, but things improved as the season went on. However, the whole point for me is to grow fruit that when others taste it they exclaim that it’s the best they ever had- also my own palate has been spoiled by previous seasons of higher brix fruit.
But then, it is best to count our blessings and, overall, our orchards were generous this year. Crops tended to be bountiful, and the fruit often tasted good, at least. Squirrels and coons were virtually non-existent at many sites (sorry about charging many of you for coon and squirrel baffles on the first year in memory when they may not have been needed). Sites where birds are usually a problem saw much less than the common level of damage.
Why so little competition from wildlife? Humans are so detached from the natural world that I haven’t even seen this matter discussed in the media. The cohabitants of our environment apparently suffered a terrible starvation winter 22-23 that rendered a steep drop in the population of a wide range of wildlife, including squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, raccoons, possums and even birds that rely on fruit as part of their diets. During the fall of 2022, the squirrels stripped the forest (and many of our orchards) of anything edible, apparently due to another mast crop failure. It was their usual futile attempt to survive a season where they could not store adequate nuts to get through winter and it ended up bringing other species down with them. The nut crop had been once again rotted out by another spring of relentless rain.
OK, that’s just a theory, but since no one else is talking about it I figured you might want to know my opinion. I’m seeing a gradual return of the squirrel population and quite a few dead raccoons on the road, so the populations are probably rebounding, however in the woods around me, at least, acorns and other nuts are still pretty scarce. Next year’s question will be, do we need baffles to protect our fruit? Probably??? Insurance can be expensive.
At any rate, I hope all of you harvested a bounty of love and pleasure in 2023, including from your orchards, and that we do even better in 24.
Happy New Year!