Local News
Local fruit farmer shares how season is progressing
Berry season in Portage la Prairie has been underway for a while, and local berry farmer, Philip Ronald, says this year feels like a return to the average as opposed to recent history. "People are using last year as a baseline, and the thing is, last year we had the second-hottest May in recorded history, so that drove everything to an early ripening time. This year, I'd say is pretty close to average." Ronald, who co-owns Riverbend Orchards with his wife Karen, shares what they are working on at their farm. "We're picking cherries right now, and they're kind of the last thing on the docket for July. They're pretty much on time, on target, so it's been a fairly well-timed year. We've had lots of rain, decent heat units. We have no complaints." Ronald achieved his PhD at the University of Saskatchewan in the Native Fruit Development program, studying diseases specifically of the saskatoon berry. He notes that the schooling wasn't originally planned to be for his own farm, but it hasn't hurt them. He adds some of the issues that are being found in fruit in the Portage area. "This has been a challenging summer for disease and insect pressure. It has to do with a very mild winter that we had, and then also the tremendous amount of moisture that we had in June and July this year. So, those two things, put together, are the perfect recipe for problems," Ronald continues. "On saskatoons this year, we saw fair bit of disease pressure. So, you have to have a control strategy to fight that off. And on some of the late-maturing fruits, like cherries, we're seeing insect pressure. One of the things that's been in the news a lot the last week or two is an invasive pest known as spotted-wing fruit fly. It's been in our country for at least ten years, but it's especially bad this year because of the warm winter and the very moist summer. People are seeing very heavy infestations on raspberries. If they didn't control it on their cherries, they'll be seeing it on there too. It just makes the fruit unusable." Ronald emphasizes that even if it's too late to save the fruit this year, you should be trying to control it, so the infestation doesn't return next year. You can do that by picking up bad fruit off the ground and making sure it is disposed of, away from the plants so that the larvae of the fruit flys don't get into the ground. Lastly, Ronald extended his thanks to the community for buying local fruit.