COLUMBUS – Last weekend’s low temperatures and snow had fruit farmers in central Ohio and elsewhere worried, but it doesn’t appear those conditions did any significant damage to their crops.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
A mild winter and the third-warmest March on record encouraged early blooms, which then were threatened by the weekend’s weather, when temperatures were in the mid-20s.
Peach trees are particularly susceptible to cold, growers say, although apples and other fruit also have been put in jeopardy across a large swath of the country by frigid April temperatures.
“Knock on wood, at this point we’re good,” said Marshall Branstool, owner of Utica’s Branstool Orchards, on Monday. “It killed off some open flowers on the peach trees, but that can actually help out a bit, because otherwise we’d have to thin them out ourselves.”
The weather forecast for the rest of this week offers better news for growers, with temperatures likely to remain above freezing after today and expected to rise to a daytime high of about 70 by the weekend.
Meanwhile, syrup makers in maple-rich Vermont are having a banner year despite initial fears that an early start to the maple season this winter would cut it short.
Producers say the warm weather in late March and early April didn’t bring an end to the maple sap gathering season, and recent cold temperatures have extended it. Warm days and cold nights allow maple sap to flow, but too much warmth — and the appearance of buds on maple trees — brings a quick end to the season.