Big temperature swings have cherry growers keeping fingers crossed

At 78, Maple City resident Joe Shimek can't remember the last time he's seen snow fall and stick to the ground this late in April.

“You tend to forget the bad things,” the lifelong cherry grower said.

He planned an afternoon walk in his orchard planned yesterday just after the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for much of the northern Lower Peninsula. The storm, the second in as many weeks, was expected to bring five to eight inches of snow and break a 41-year record.

Temperatures reached the mid-60s March 29 and 30 and April 1 in Maple City. But like a belated April Fool’s prank, Mother Nature had the last laugh, dumping as much as 15 inches of snow from April 4 through Sunday at the Road Commission garage in Suttons Bay. Snowfall tallied in April tied the previous record for the month set in 1966.

All but two or three county road commission trucks were still equipped with plows and sanders for the spring storm, which many called the worst of the season. But that doesn’t mean it was business as usual for crews. The salt/sand mixture applied to roads was adjusted to include more salt and less sand.

“It was a lot straighter salt mixture. We had just got done with most of our sweeping and didn’t want to put more sand on the road,” commission superintendent Herb Cradduck said.

Wind gusts as high as 43 mph were recorded in southern Leland Township, creating poor visibility and drifts on roads where days earlier there had been clear sailing.

Highs in the 60s at the beginning of the month hastened the development of the cherry crop, which approached “bud swell” stage. Damage may have resulted following the more than 40-degree drop in temperatures, but the impact’s extent is not yet known.

“We’re just beginning to poke around,” said Nikki Rothwell, director of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station. “I don’t know if things were far enough along to sustain damage.”

Growers in Allegan and VanBuren counties reported heavy losses (60 to 75 percent) as a result of the unusual spring weather since their crop was further along in development than in northern Michigan.

MSU researchers have developed a spring critical temperature chart to estimate damage to crops.

“Fortunately, the range of damaging temperatures during early growth is very wide,” said Mark Longstroth of the MSU extension in VanBuren County. “Depending on the type of fruit, the cold temperatures required to kill 10 percent of the flower buds is 18 to 15 degrees. The temperature required to kill 90 percent of the blossoms is at or just above zero.”

So even though some damage is expected, there are still plenty of fruit buds available to flower and bear fruit.

Shimek planned to employ the “tried and true” method to assess damage in the cherry crop: “forcing” cuttings by bringing them indoors and putting them in water.
Like Shimek, Charlie Edson of Bel Lago Vineyard and Winery was also set to take a walk to assess the impact on this year’s grape crop.

“It’d be hard to imagine (damage) with the stage of growth the grapes are at,” Edson said. “Grapes are pretty hardy. When cherries are in full bloom, they’ve just begun.”
Shimek said he should have a good idea about the damage sustained in the first April storm by early next week. If buds grow, damage was little to none.

Winter weather in spring is eerily similar to bonechilling temperatures and stinging winds reported in May 2002 that had nearly unprecedented results: a year with no tart cherry harvest.

Northern Michigan growers eliminated a significant product surplus that year, but also lost customers who turned to overseas sources such as Hungary for fruit. In an effort to regain a foothold in the market, the Cherry Marketing Institute earlier this year launched a new marketing campaign with the slogan: “Cherries. Not Just Another Berry.”

Experience is the best teacher. And Shimek, with a lifetime experience on his family’s Maple City farm, has a wealth of knowledge upon which to draw.

“You can’t have a (cherry) crop every year. It has never happened and never will,” he said.