Petch Orchards in Hemmingford has been growing many different varieties of apples for decades. Though the majority of what is now produced goes to packing houses and major grocery stores, a portion is reserved for its famous U-pick. This year, the U-pick was a highlight amidst a hard summer and fall.
The season was a tough one and Justin Petch says, “We’ve seen worse, but we’ve definitely seen a lot better. The month of August we saw very little rain and, you know, the average throughout the summer and fall was well below.” This has been a province-wide issue due to the lack of rain. He explains that a lot of this year’s apples are very small and are being used for juice, since they aren’t up to the standard of apples to sell as-is. He adds that though there was some great fruit, “The trees have been stressed out due to the drought, and therefore some varieties ripened too quickly and dropped their fruit prior to us being able to pick them.”
The lack of rain meant that watering the orchards was a challenge. “Some of our blocks, especially the younger plantations, are irrigated. We have a drip line installed and an underground pumping system. But the water comes from two manmade ponds for this purpose,” Petch explains, and this was the first time in three years that they have had to rely on this system. “We pretty much drained them within a month, as their need was nonstop and you could only water such a small section at a time,” he says. Luckily, it did prevent the trees from getting too stressed and dropping apples. On top of this, “The stressed-out trees won’t produce as much in the following year, because they won’t set as many buds.” Petch is hoping for a lot of snow this winter to help build up a reservoir of water.
History and diversity
About seven or eight years ago, Petch Orchards started a project that is now starting to come to fruition. Petch acquired some budwood from the Apple Research Center in Geneva, New York at Cornell, as well in Harrow, Ontario. With these, he was able to graft various heritage varieties.
At this point, he has over 110 types of apples on the farm. “We have a half-acre block where I planted these heritage varieties on dwarfing root stalks and tried to get between one to three trees, or trees that survived post-grafting in that section,” he says. Some of these have been in production for two years now.
Petch explains the process of making these heritage varieties: “They’re essentially cloned from the parent by taking the branch wood of the existing tree, connecting it to a rootstock, and therefore transferring the exact genetic information to that tree.”
Petch says. “We’ve always had a selection of heritage varieties on site that my grandfather would’ve planted decades ago – a lot of them that are not seen anymore.” An example of this is the Fameuse, which is the oldest Quebec variety and has been around for centuries. Another is the Flower of Kent, which was allegedly the kind of apple that fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head and helped with the discovery of gravity.
Though Petch says there isn’t much of a commercial or economic incentive for dedicating so much time to heritage apples, he says he feels that “One day, people will get interested in these heritage varieties and come to essentially visit something of a living museum … It’s saving a piece of history.”