This Week on the Farm - Archives

How's the crop look?

Our week has been busy, as it should be this time of year. The trees are planted and mouse collars are on. We put these white plastic collars on the new trees for a couple of reasons. First, it protects them from mice, who will eat the bark in the winter. We mulch with hay around the trees, so the mice love to hang around. The likelihood of them eating the bark is high.

Secondly, the white color reflects sunlight and protects the tree bark from warming up on really sunny spring days. When the bark gets warm, the sap starts flowing. If the sap starts flowing before the severe cold nights are done for the year, damage to the tree can occur. We think this is what happened this past spring to the three-year-old tart cherry trees of ours that died. They didn't have mouse collars on because they were too big, and they weren't painted white, either. We usually paint the bark on young trees once they are too big for mouse collars.

I just talked to one of our customers yesterday who lives four miles east of us, and he, too, had trees and plants die this spring. There was a lot of tree mortality throughout Northern Michigan this year. It was a cold winter!

People always love to ask me "How does the crop look?” I'm never quite sure how to answer that in less than an 1/2 hour. When people are asking this, I don't know if they are just making conversation or if they really do want to know.

The answer is complex because we are so diverse, and different crops are responding differently to the unusual conditions. Most people wonder about cherries, since apples are pretty steady, while cherries can vary a lot from year to year. The other problem with answering this question is that I don't know if they are interested in crop size, quality or price. All three of these factors usually have a different answer.

It is funny, you can't talk to anyone in the fruit business without them asking what we think the crop looks like. That's why you always see farmers leaning against a pick-up, talking. They're trying to figure out what the crop is like, because crop size can determine price. The truth is nobody really knows. I'll do a little investigating and let you know what I've found out about the cherry crop next week.

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