Poor spring and summer means apple crop this year will not be a bumper one
This year's apple crop in Estonia is likely to vary from region to region, and will generally be on the poor side, thanks to a chilly spring and rainy early summer.
In Central Estonia for instance, the harvest will be much more modest than last year, while half of the varieties will not bear fruit this year.
The Rebane farm in the village of Märjandi, Järva County, is run by a married couple, Piia and Meelis Tiigemäe, and boasts close to a thousand apple trees in the farm's orchard. Piia and Meelis have been working in gardening and field farming for over 30 years, and say that judging from the apples alone, it is clear that this year's harvest will be nothing to shout about.
"This year's apple harvest will certainly be much more modest than last year's, as the spring frost took away a lot of blossom, while the first half of summer, which was very wet and cold, did its work. There have been a great many pests and apple diseases, and as a result there are a lot of low-quality apples," Piia Tiigemäe said.
Crop thinning, meaning partly removing apples which are growing too close together, is part of an apple grower's daily work, and provides the remaining fruits more capacity to grow.
"If it is a cold year, a cold summer, a cold autumn, then fewer apples will ripen quickly," Meelis Tiigemäe added.
Another issue has been the abundance of aphids this year. This also creates a lot of extra work, as these have to be removed before the harvest ripens.
"We have never seen as many aphids as this year. There are too many of them. But moreover, this year their 'enemies,' earwigs, are also not present. A few wasps were flying around at the beginning of summer, but that was all scarce too," Meelis Tiigemäe said.
Another peculiarity of this year is that some varieties of apple trees will not be bearing any fruit at all.
"But luckily, we still have something to offer our customers. There have been more winter apples and fewer summer apples, as the frost did its work on them during the blossom season. The winter apples bloomed a little later and there will likely be more of them, so in winter we will be able to offer apples to our customers," she added.
Meelis noted that the harvest will also be later, while many apples and other fruit will taste more sour than usual.
The picture is barely any better over at the Rebase farm's vegetable plot, thanks to the land being flooded several times.
"Luckily, our potato field lies on the higher portion of the field, and not much standing water has remained there, but for example our onion crop has completely rotted, while the pea crop is damaged — the roots of the plants simply perish from the excess water," Piia noted.
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Editor: Urmet Kook, Andrew Whyte
