The 14th annual Salt Spring Island Apple Festival has been cancelled due to a near island-wide crop failure, according to organizer Harry Burton.
Cool, wet weather during early May disrupted pollination, Burton said. The island’s 16 orchards were also hit with a crippling infestation of tent caterpillars that stripped many trees of their leaves just as the fruit was starting to set.
“We knew it was going to be a bad year for caterpillars because you could see the egg masses on the outer limbs of the trees,” Burton said.
Larger trees and newer apple varieties suffered the most damage, Burton said. A handful of older, heritage apple varieties such as the Dutch Belle de Boskoop, the centuries-old English Bramley and the 18th-century American Hubbardston Nonesuch survived and thrived.
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Burton grows 200 apple varieties at Apple Luscious Organic Orchard, but less than a dozen varieties were productive enough to show at a festival. Burton’s yield is down 70 to 80 per cent from last year.
“It was a tough call, but we didn’t want to put on a mediocre festival,” said Burton.
More than 300 varieties of apple were on display and for sale at last year’s festival, which drew 1,500 people.
The island’s crop failure appears to be an isolated case. The University of B.C. Botanical Garden Apple Festival is going ahead as planned Oct. 13 and 14, according to Friends of the UBC Botanical Garden member Margaret Butschler.
The festival will bring in 50,000 pounds of apples from more than two dozen growers throughout the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan to serve an anticipated 9,000 visitors.
Okanagan apple growers are expecting a bumper crop, according to BC Fruit Growers’ Association general manager Glen Lucas.
But despite the relative abundance of locally grown apples, when Okanagan-grown favourites such as Royal Gala hit store shelves this week consumers can expect to pay slightly more than last year. Massive crop losses in Ontario and the Eastern United States due to a late frost last spring have reduced the available supply to the point that prices are starting to rise, Lucas said.
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