By Roy Wood, Special to the Times Chronicle
Chilly and fluctuating temperatures during the critical winter and spring months mean a less bountiful fruit harvest in the South Okanagan this year, according to local orchardists.
“The weather over the winter was cold and hot, cold and hot. … It got hot in April for a little bit and then it got cold again,” Kulshan Aujla of Osoyoos Fruit Basket said in an interview.
“It confuses the plants,” he said. “They think the summer’s here and they start blooming … and then you get a cold snap.”
All the fruit crops – cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots and apples – are off from last year’s bumper harvest, he said.
At the Rama Farm Market north of Oliver, owner Karmjit Khangura told the Times Chronicle that virtually all the fruit in the orchards there suffered significant frost damage. “Overall, everything is damaged,” she said.
She estimates this year’s cherry crop will come in at no more than half of last year’s bounty.
Peaches, she said, are “not too bad, not too good,” with damage varying by location in the orchard. Apricots are about 20 per cent of last year.
South on Highway 97 at Peach Hill Farm Market, the peach crop is faring a bit better, according to owner Kuljeet Kaler.
She described the peach harvest as on a par with 2015. The crop is heavy enough that the crew did a thinning in the past week.
The cherry harvest is another matter, she said. “Cherries are a very light crop. Not a good crop,” she said, particularly the Titan variety that usually kicks off the season.
Apricots are nearly a total loss, with most trees having very little if any fruit on them.
Kaler also blames the fluctuating weather for the season’s poor yields. “It’s because of the cold. It got warm in January and then it got cold.”
On the bright side, she said it looks like the whole gamut of apple varieties have handled the weather well and should provide a bounty.
Manvir Gill at J and H Orchards in Osoyoos echoed the views of his fellow orchardists, saying this year’s crops “are not looking very good at all.”
“The early spring frosts took out quite a bit of fruit. There was a nice bloom and then it got really cold and … it just killed 80 or 90 per cent of the fruit in some areas,” he said.
He said the unusual weather resulted in some areas of the orchard doing better than others. “It was spotty.”
He cited peaches as an example. “Certain blocks of peaches look really good. (But) some areas have no peaches on the trees.”
Gill described the cherry crop as “something like 10 per cent” of last year.
The timing of the frosts was a factor as well as the severity. “The fruit didn’t get to set properly. It wasn’t mature enough. The flower was just turning into that stage where it was going to turn into fruit. … But then that frost came and annihilated a lot of things.”
Aujla pointed out that there is a bit of an upside to lighter crops. In a bumper year like 2025, many crops have to be thinned “protect the size of the fruit,” he said.
“It … means there’s more work. You gotta thin cherries. You gotta thin peaches. You have to protect the size.”
But this year, the lighter crops mean size is not going to be an issue because there’s not so much fruit on the trees.
