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‘The bees have pollinated,” the trees in Louis Moore’s orchard, located on Fodderstack Road, said Mr. Moore. His 10 to 12 acres of peaches “are looking very good,” he said, adding this year it’s a “big bud crop.”
He explained that after the tree Buffers a loss like the one last year, when 90 percent of the peach crop was frozen at bud stage, often the following year will bring a “bumper crop. Big bud is a colloquial term but it means there are more buds on the tree than normal,” he said.
“The peaches are set,” he said, explaining that unless the county is hit with p sudden cold wave, the peachqfkmll survive.
Mr Motire said “apples are in blossom and many have been pollinated, but they could be more susceptible to cold weather.”
“I’d like to see a few warm days,” Mr. Williams said. “I’d like to see more bee activity” in the apple orchards, he said.
“This year, as with others, we are running a couple of weeks ahead of schedule, but you can expect peaches — if all goes well — the first of July,” Mr. Moore said, adding his orchard should produce peaches until September.
Mr. Hutcheson’s orchard is part of Virginia’s Finest, an agricultural standard established by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which acknowledges perfect produce, produces apples for his own usage, peaches, nectarines, roses and mums for retail.
“We had to branch out to other things because you could not count on the peach crop,” he said. He has 300 long-stem rose bushes and 3,000 mums, available for fall planting.
Besides fighting the cooling effect of Jack Frost, orchard keepers like Mr. Hutcheson fight nature’s own.
“Bears love this fruit,” he said, adding the bears come down from the national forest that borders his property and “tear the trees to pieces. They can’t eat the ones off the bottom. They have to reach up to the tops and in the process, tear the tree to shreds.”
Several trees in Mr. Hutcheson’s orchard are young, newly planted after older ones were damaged by bears.
“The cubs don’t hurt the tree so badly. They can just climb up there and sit but the big ones pull it apart,” he said.
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