Michigan apples finishing and ready to bloom
Michigan apples finishing and ready to bloom
BENTON HARBOR, MI — For Greg Orchards & Produce Inc., located here, the 2013 apple storage deal was coming to an end by late May.
On May 13, Barry Winkel, partner and general manager, said, “We’ve been packing 10 hour days and for the last few Saturdays. But I can’t complain. We had the biggest year we ever had.”
Michigan produced “30 million bushels” in 2013 “when normally we have 21 [million] or 22 million,” he said. “The markets have been good. The later we go, the better it gets, as other shippers finish.”
At Greg Orchards & Produce Inc., Barry Winkel, partner and general manager, and Marilyn Redder, sales manager, check out packing of the tail end of the 2013 Michigan apple crop.
Given good prices, “I wish we could start the fall from here,” Winkel joked.
The outlook is very good for the 2014 Michigan apple crop, he added.
Although it was a hard winter for Michigan, “It was never cold enough to hurt the apple trees,” he said. “We could have as big of a crop as last year. We use newer rootstocks that are precocious and bear consistently. We look forward to another good crop.”
When the 2012 Michigan apple crop was destroyed by multiple spring frosts, “it set everyone back a year.” But the industry rebuilt and recovered.
“Either you get bigger or you get out,” Winkel said. “The numbers of customers keep getting smaller as the chains buy each other. The industry has really changed in the last 15 years.”
Winkel said Michigan’s peach crop “looks good. Normally once you hit 10 below zero, you lose your peaches. We had some minus-15 and minus-17 nights, but it wasn’t that cold for long and we are looking at a good peach crop.”
He added that Michigan peach trees have such heavy blooms “that the growers could lose half of them in the winter and still have a good crop. The sour cherries are fine too and Concord grapes in Lawton look good. The wine grapes are more tender and they got hurt.”
Greg Orchards’ Marilyn Redder, sales manager, summed up the early-spring status of Michigan fresh fruit crops by saying, “I’ve heard no one say they’ve had problems.”
Winkel said Greg also markets 60 acres of asparagus production. Northern Michigan asparagus will run until the end of June.
