A Michigan blueberry expert says the Southwest Michigan crop is okay, despite some recent swings in the weather.
Cheyenne Sloan is a small fruit educator with the Michigan State University Extension Office.
She said drastic temperature shifts can cause issues for small fruit crops, especially blueberries, with warmth "waking" them up from their winter slumber, and then cold potentially causing damage.
“If it's too warm for too long, and then we get like a big cold snap — we're on the up and then we're on the down. Depending on how warm it has been and where the plant is in its growth stage will impact how cold it can get" before the fruit is vulnerable to damage, she said.
But Sloan added that recent high temperatures weren’t high enough to cause issues.
“It was warm for a couple days, but it wasn't— the plants were asleep enough and it wasn't warm enough, for long enough for it to have really woken the plants up.”
Sloan calls these inconsistent temperature and weather patterns "wiggly weather," adding that climate change is making things wigglier.
“Unpredictable spring, unpredictable fall. So like, those shoulder seasons are really are just much more unpredictable than they have been in the past. And we and farmers love predictability, let me tell you,” Sloan said.
And she said climate change has also led to harder summers for growers, with rain far less consistent in the warmer months.
"We've gotten significantly drier. We're not really getting rain when we need it. Instead, we're having these like torrential downpours, in the spring and in the fall," Sloan said.
"If you were to look at statistics for the amount of rainfall we're getting in Michigan, it's like it hasn't changed. And so you're like, 'Oh, it's fine. Like nothing's really changing." But you have to look at when we're getting the rain. It used to be like much more spread out across the entire year and we're not really seeing that."
Sloan said this has led many growers to rely more on irrigating their plants instead of waiting for rain.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
