Expect to pay a little more for juicy peaches or crisp apples this summer. Flower blooms on fruit trees were hit hard during the cold snap last weekend.

Peach and apple trees were hit the hardest. Alice Land, who grows apples, Asian pears and peaches with her husband at an orchard in Taylorsville, said she’s suffered a 100 percent loss.

“We had apples, pears and peaches blooming, and all the blossoms are now black,” she said. “If it had been cold just one night, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But the trees can’t take three nights in a row of cold temperatures.”

Land has worked in the orchard since 1989. Although she’s lost some crops to hail in the past, this is the first time cold weather killed the crop. Land has about 20 acres of fruit trees in her orchard. Some neighboring orchards have close to 100 acres and, like her, the blooms are all black.

“I have one friend who was just traveling, and he said the blossoms were black from here to Alabama,” she said. “I’m sure the price of apples will go up in stores because they’ll have to ship the fruit in.”

Land has insurance on her orchard, but said that may not be enough to cover the cost of a ruined crop.

“The insurance will keep us from going bankrupt, but that’s about it. That’s why most of us have to have other jobs besides just farming,” she said. “My husband said we’d be lucky if we had enough apples to make a pie. It’s discouraging at a time like this.”

Catawba County farmer Ira Cline grows strawberries, blueberries and pecans. Some of his plants were affected by the cold weather, as well. Overall, however, his plants did better than Land’s.

“We are going to have strawberries. We pumped water for 62 hours, from April 6 through April 10, to prevent frostbite on the plants,” he said. “At a time like this, with temperatures around 20 degrees, you’re going to lose some plants. The frost also slowed growing down some. We probably won’t have berries to sell until early May.”

His blueberry and pecan trees didn’t fare as well.

“Our blueberry plants froze, and we lost the pecans, too,” Cline said, adding nothing could be done to prevent the blueberry trees from freezing. “We could have ruined the blueberries completely if we tried to do something. And the blooms on the pecan trees were farther along than I thought. They all died.”

Despite these setbacks, Cline, who has farmed for most of his life, has a positive outlook on his summer season.

“We have frozen blueberries, and strawberry and blueberry cider to sell. We also have a lot of gourds to sell. And come May, we’ll still have our strawberries,” he said. “The worst part about the cold weather last weekend was that it will hurt the state’s economy. North Carolina’s No. 1 industry is agriculture.”

source : www.hickoryrecord.com