As the saying goes, if you don’t like the weather in Maine, wait five minutes.
But that kind of unpredictability can be hard for farmers and gardeners, who depend on reliable sunshine to germinate and grow seeds into plants and reliable rain to water them. Still, this spring, several farm experts weigh the knowns and try to imagine the unknowns as they try their best to give an outlook on Maine crops including strawberries, apples and blueberries.
And so far, things seem to be doing OK.
“I think everybody was worried through the winter,” Renae Moran, a fruit tree specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said earlier this week of the apple crop. “But our trees look pretty good right now. The trees seem to have a heavy bloom, and pollination has been good to great around the state. We’ve had lots of days with warm weather … and we didn’t get a hard freeze that would freeze the blossoms last week. At this point I’m confident.”
Of course, a good spring doesn’t always lead to a good harvest, she said. Weather fluctuations can do a number on a farm’s outcome, and those factors are out of a farmer’s control.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “Maine’s strawberry, blueberry and apple crops looking good, experts say,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Abigail Curtis, please follow this link to the BDN online.
