Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 14, 1994 TAG: 9405160162
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ERIKA BOLSTAD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This summer, local peaches may be more expensive and harder to find. Winter ice storms that closed schools, downed power lines and stranded travelers also froze budding peach trees, severely damaging this year's crop.
``Roughly half the crop has seen damage that will substantially reduce production,'' Brad Schwab, a statistician with the Virginia Agricultural Statistics Service, said Friday.
Orchard owner Mark Ikenberry of Daleville said 15 percent to 25 percent of his peach crop was lost.
``A peach, it blooms earlier in the spring,'' he said. ``A peach is a little more chancy than, say, apples.''
Most of the Ikenberry Orchards crop is retail, sold on the farm, so they don't expect to lose much of the cash generated from those sales. But there won't be many extra peaches for wholesale.
Homeowners with peach trees in their back yards should still be able to make peach preserves this summer, because those trees weathered the winter better.
John Arbogast, an agricultural extension agent in Roanoke, hasn't had many calls from home growers about frostbitten peach buds, but he has had quite a few calls about a leaf-curling fungus.
Although peaches are not one of Virginia's big cash crops, they generate quite a bit of money for growers. In 1992, 2,100 acres of peaches brought in $3.8 million.
Apples, on the other hand, bring in $31.3 million, Schwab said.
Local orchard peaches may be hard to come by, but grocery stores still will have plenty of peaches - damage wasn't as severe in other states.
``It may increase the price a little bit on the local market, but it's more of an area thing,'' Schwab said. ``I would definitely not make any assumptions that peach prices are going to shoot up.''
Grocery stores will buy from local growers when Virginia peaches are in season because the quality is better, said Dale White, produce manager at Jay's IGA Market on Orange Avenue Northwest in Roanoke. But local peaches are only in season at the end of the summer.
Most peaches come from Georgia and South Carolina, and as the season progresses, from as far north as Pennsylvania.
Out-of-state peaches "have already been picked for several days, and peaches just don't keep well,'' White said.
by CNB