Spring snow bites Central’s apricot crop

October's extreme weather event brought snow down to low levels across Central Otago. Panmure Orchard pictured here on the first night it snowed

October brought with it extreme weather, including snow down to low levels across Central Otago, affecting a significant number of apricot crops.

Aimee Wilson

Cromwell-based orchardist, Simon Webb, says a high exposed block on his property that only had wind machines for protection, received a reasonable percentage of damage, while some of his other blocks still had up to 70 percent of the crop left.

Simon is now faced with being unable to export the fruit this season, as it would be uneconomic. “We still have the same costs, so you just have to keep going with it,” he says. Apricots make up 30 percent of his total operation of stonefruit and pipfruit, like many other orchards in the district. Fruit from the trees that still performed well would be made available to the domestic market instead.

The last time a significant snow event occurred in Central Otago so late in the season was in November 2012, second only to the 18 September snow event in the late 1960s. Earnscleugh orchardist, Harry Roberts, says the 1960s event was the “worst snow event” he can remember, frost fighting for nine days straight using frost pots, with six to eight inches of snow on the ground in the Cromwell Gorge where his brother-in-law was orcharding. “It was cold. It froze hard for four nights,” Harry says. A special train was even brought up from Dunedin with more diesel for the frost pots. This recent event had many orchardists in the district frost fighting for three nights, but Harry says the weather forecasts are so accurate nowadays, it was much easier to prepare. “You just have to be on the ball and experience some of those hard times,” Harry says. “Windmills won’t hack it in the cold air.”

Many orchards in the district were frost fighting for three nights

Apricots were at a growth stage where young green fruit were exposed to the elements, but Harry says his crop had actually been more affected by hard frosts three weeks prior. “We’ve had quite a few affected, but we were caught a wee bit back in the bloom.”

Panmure Orchards director, Jeremy Hiscock, says he was “in a state of dumb shock” when the weather event first came through Earncleugh. He thought he was going to lose his entire crop. The orchard, which is made up of cherries, nectarines and peaches, was white from top to toe, including all of the forks between the branches, with the snow building up on every leaf and petal. “I have never seen anything like it in my life,” Jeremy says. Halfway through the first snow day, with the sunset and 5cm of fresh snow on the ground and more forecast that night, he thought his orchard was a goner, such was the weight of the snow on the trees in full bloom. Luckily, the second lot of snow never came, but there was still frost fighting to do for two more nights. “Twelve hours of frost fighting water with additional snow fall would’ve broken the trees in half. The wind machines were no good because they only work with an inversion layer of warmer air, of which there was none, and we were facing gusts of 25 to 50km. The wind machines were going to destroy themselves,” Jeremy says. Luckily, it warmed up considerably and they were able to turn on the under-tree sprinkler system to lift block temperatures and get rid of the excess snow. “All we did is lose a lot of sleep and burn a lot of fuel. When we talked to our neighbours while the snow was falling and settling on the trees and ground, it was a case of, ‘who’s got the longest face’.” While heavy snow affected the main highway from Alexandra south through to the Teviot Valley, Roxburgh orchardist Gary Bennetts said the temperatures didn’t drop down as low as he would have expected. “There were definite snow drifts, but the air wasn’t actually that chilled,” Gary says. He says there was some damage to the young tissue of some of his apricots but that was all. However, the worst is not over yet. Orchardists are currently checking the damage to the flowers and there is still a chance that crops will be affected by what Jeremy described as “eclectic pollination” rather than fruit frost damage. “These cold windy days have not been good for business,” Jeremy says. “But we still have fruit.” Orchardists are now hoping for more rain to make their trees “grow like crazy”, particularly for cherry growers waiting for the shuck split. Although Panmure Orchards has lost an estimated 15 to 20 percent of its viable flowers on the trees, Jeremy says that doesn’t necessarily mean the orchard has lost 15 to 20 percent of its crop. “We just don’t know yet. There are still viable crops in the district.”