Apple harvest looks good
Farmers Forum staff
LONDON — Southwestern Ontario apple growers looked forward to a generally good 2025 crop despite a summer of drought and variable weather.
Sue Guenther, of Aylmer Big Apple Orchard in Elgin County, reported abundant apples across her operation’s 150 acres. “It’s been amazing and we have lots of apples,” she told Farmers Forum on Sept. 2.
Despite the region being “on the very dry side” through the summer, earlier and timely rains in May and June helped ensure robust fruit development. Guenther noted that the cooler spring weather delayed the season’s start by two weeks compared to last year. “We didn’t really have spring, it just kind of stayed chilly,” she said. Apple sizes remain “pretty average,” she reported, though some varieties naturally vary, with smaller types like Paula Red holding true to form and larger ones like Honeycrisp showing good size. The orchard’s eight varieties — Paula Red, Gravenstein, Ginger Gold, Sunrise, Empire, Macintosh, Golden Jubilee, and Honeycrisp — are mostly fall apples,
Philip Crunican, of Crunican Orchards in Middlesex County, northwest of London, was equally enthusiastic about a good crop.
“We’re happy with the way things look,” Crunican said, crediting timely rains that helped the apple varieties size up well through an otherwise dry season, starting with spring rains that bolstered the trees’ resources heading into the summer.
This year’s summer apples were “a little bit small” due to the dry season, he said, but fall varieties like Honeycrisp, Gala, and Macs showed strong development. Crunican’s 25 acres of mostly older, deep-rooted trees weathered the dry spell better than younger plantings, which required irrigation via a water wagon to ensure adequate fruit size.
In the Niagara Region, Torrie Warner of Warner’s Farm grows 25 varieties and said he was contending with “severe dryness” that left his clay soils parched with dry cracks two inches wide and wrist deep. He frankly observed that his non-irrigated Golden Delicious and Mutsu trees, located on clay soil, carried apples “less than average” in size this year. “If you have sandy soil, you’re OK, but on heavier clays, once those soils have dried out, there’s nothing you can do.”
Warner irrigates using water piped from Lake Ontario, on other parts of his 14 acres of orchard. He grows 16 other apple varieties, including Paula Red, Ginger Gold, Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisps and Ambrosia. These irrigated apples were producing a better crop, said the farmer, who supplies retail and farmers’ markets.
