The Orchardist’s Hard Lesson in Elevation
After a devastating May freeze wiped out his peach crop, a local grower shares a hard-won lesson on the importance of topography and variety selection for Pacific Northwest fruit farming.
On the night of May 6th, we had a severe freeze that did considerable damage to the fruit crop. Our peach crop was lost; we would have had from 8,000 to 10,000 boxes of peaches if they had not been injured. My neighbor, whose peach orchard is but a few rods from mine, will have a full crop. He has less than two hundred trees, while we have thirteen hundred, and yet he will have more than twice as many peaches as we will have. Why this difference? It is simply a matter of elevation. His peach orchard is a few feet higher than mine, and yet he escaped almost entirely while we lost practically all of ours. What is the lesson to be learned from this? Plant your peach orchard on your highest ground. I have gone over my experimental apple orchard with pencil and paper to classify sixty-two varieties by their hardiness during the bloom. The Ben Davis stood the freeze the best, while varieties like the Grimes' Golden and McIntosh killed badly. The freeze has been something terrible in the region, and apples will be very high. Those who have apples left should take good care of them, thin them, and spray thoroughly for the codling moth.
“My experience is dearly bought, but I give it to the readers of The Ranch for nothing.”
This 1903 account highlights the precarious nature of early Washington agriculture, where a single frost could bankrupt a season. Today, while modern climate modeling and irrigation have mitigated some of these risks, the tension between land elevation, microclimates, and crop viability remains a central concern for Washington's multi-billion dollar apple and stone fruit industries.
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