Horticultural Summary of the 2000 Growing Season

Horticulture Overview    E. Garcia, T. Bradshaw

The temperatures for the 2000 growing season can best be described as cooler than average (Table 1).  Our cool spring allowed for very slow bud development with green tip and half inch green stages lasting for nearly one month.  In early May, we experienced a few days of warm weather which included some record-breaking days in certain parts of the state.  These warm temperatures pushed bud development along very quickly, leading to very short tight cluster and pink periods.  This caught some growers by surprise and bees may not have been brought into some orchards at the best time.  This, along with the return of cool, cloudy weather through bloom caused widespread pollination problems.  This combination of factors, along with the heavy crop load seen last year, led to a decrease in the apple crop in Vermont for the 2000 season.  Fruit assessment at harvest also showed many misshapen fruit as a result of poor pollination.
The weather conditions during and following bloom were also not conducive to fruit set or the application of thinning sprays.  A number of growers skipped thinners entirely this year.  Growers who did thin generally took a conservative approach.

Fruit quality assessments at harvest found generally large, red fruit with low sugar levels.  The weather through the summer remained rather cloudy and cool which may have resulted in the reduction of photosynthesis.  The large fruit size can be attributed to two factors: low crop load and high moisture uptake. The starch index levels of the fruit were generally one point higher than expected values based on other maturity indices.  We feel that this can be explained by the reduction of photosynthates that moved it into the fruit tissues. Fruit drop was not generally reported to be a problem this season.  Overall, fruit quality has been described by most growers as being the best in many years.