By: Andy Johnston, Produce Category Manager
September is the beginning of local apple season at Willy Street Co-op! This year, we’ll be sourcing certified organic apples from Atoms to Apples in Mt. Horeb, and maybe some apples from the McGuire family at Blue Roof Orchard in Belmont. Ela Orchard in Rochester and Barnard Farms in Sturgeon Bay will provide us with their local apples grown using sustainable, integrated pest management practices.
Grower forecasts for this season’s apple crop run the gamut. Spring and fall hailstorms and extreme changes in temperature are creating challenges for growers in Southern Wisconsin. Up in Door County, it’s sounding like the season is going just as it’s supposed to. Let’s go to our expert orchardists on location for an in-depth report on the 2025 local apple season!
Atoms to Apples • Rami Aburomia • Mt. Horeb
This growing season started out well with a slow spring and no spring frost. Although most varieties had a good bloom, a couple did not have any flowers. This seemed to be a similar situation in other orchards, with the cause hypothesized to be extreme changes in temperature in the early winter which can kill next year’s buds. Wet and hot summers are more common, and this year is no different, but the apples are doing well and sizing up rapidly. Given last year’s late fall hail that wrecked a lot of our late varieties, I don’t take anything for granted, but we should have plenty of Zestar, Honeycrisp, CrimsonCrisp, Liberty, and many others come fall. There are some Dandee Red that are already 3 inches across, and that really makes me crave a fresh apple!
Blue Roof Orchard • Chris McGuire • Belmont
We anticipate another extremely light apple harvest at Blue Roof Orchard, with similar yields to last year. We had expected a bumper crop this year because of the biennial tendency in apples where high-yielding years tend to follow low-yielding years and because we have young trees entering production. We mostly suspect that last year’s vicious hailstorm came at a very bad time—a few weeks after bloom—when the trees were preparing to form flower buds for this year. Apple trees form their flower buds early in summer for the following spring. The storm caused massive defoliation and branch breakage which weakened the trees when they were “deciding” how many flower buds to form for spring 2025 bloom.
Ela Orchard • Bob Willard • Rochester
The season looks mixed at this point with some varieties having almost no apples, and other varieties looking very promising. The Wealthy crop at this stage looks like it could be good. We usually harvest them in late August and early September. We are hopeful on volume on the Macouns, which are late September, but they have some serious growing to do in the next month. Cortlands look lightly set (meaning a small crop), though we will know better as they ripen and we harvest them in September. Ida Reds, which are October and beyond, look very promising at this stage. Varieties which have very little fruit on them include McIntosh, Spartan, Golden Russet, Jonagold, and Jonathan.
Barnard Farm • Susan Barnard • Sturgeon Bay
We have a decent crop of apples this year. Not huge, not light, just right what they are supposed to be. There have been timely rains which aid in sizing. So far, everything is on track for a nice year of apples. We expect to start picking the early apples, Zesters, in late August. After that the early Honeycrisp will be ready. From there the McIntosh and Cortland will be ready, and we will wrap up picking with Evercrisp!
It sounds like we’ll have a good variety of delicious, fresh local apples this year! We really appreciate all of the hard work the growers and their teams put into providing us with their apples, and are looking forward to enjoying all of their incredible apples! Use our local apple guide with descriptions of local apples you’ll find in our produce departments throughout the season. Enjoy!
