From fires to floods: Mother Nature throwing everything at Canadian growers

After the huge rainstorms of this summer, it took some vineyard managers a few days before they could get back out in the fields to tend to the vines. ~ Tawse Winery photo

By Luke Edwards

The recent strong showing of Ontario and Niagara wineries at the WineAlign awards is surely something to celebrate. But for some, there’s also a caveat worth considering as many of Niagara’s grape growing colleagues on the west coast have been contending with wildfires and the destruction that goes with them.

“It’s tough, too, because you feel a little bit of guilt when B.C. had some really cold winters and then issues of smoke,” said Jennifer Otting, winemaker at Tawse, which this year took home the Winery of the Year award.

While the west coast has faced its weather related issues in recent years, this summer has been marked with wild weather in Niagara too, as multiple storms dropped large amounts of water on the region in a short period of time. It’s left growers with a level of uncertainty as the harvest season is set to get underway.

“I think it’s hard to know what’s going to happen because it’s been so consistently wet,” said Augusta Van Muyen, Tawse vineyard manager and current Grape King.

Van Muyen said after the second storm the vines started putting their power into the fruit, and the fruit began to ripen.

“But then, as the fruits have dried out in the last week it started putting the power back into the shoots so the shoots have actually jumped quite a bit,” she said, shortly after yet another storm dropped four inches of rain on the Beamsville Bench area.

Van Muyen said it’s dragged out the ripening process.

At the same time, the fruits can only take so much moisture before they split.

On the bright side, should the weather cooperate this fall, they could still have a good crop. Warm, sunny days that cool off overnight would be ideal.

Growers could also see damage in the spring, especially if it’s a hard winter, she said, though she cautioned uncertainty since she’s never experienced a summer quite like this one.

The fortunate thing for many Bench growers is that the Escarpment meant there was limited standing water in vineyards, unlike what some in Niagara-on-the-Lake experienced.

Kevin Watson, who manages 100 acres of vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake, said his vines were fairly fortunate but acknowledged some areas, especially in NOTL, weren’t so lucky.

While grape vines don’t like “wet feet” or having standing water in the fields, Watson said they do like to suck up a lot of moisture. So generally speaking, vineyards can handle a lot of rain from that perspective. However, extended periods of moisture in the leaves and canopy can lead to fungal disease pressures.

That’s why, following one of the storms, the GGO, the Ontario Tender Fruit Growers, and Flowers Canada Ontario issued a statement calling for support, including allowing fungicides to be applied by drone. Watson said it would give growers a more rapid response following a rain storm.

Applying product as soon as possible after a rain event is key. In some cases in Niagara, Watson said the fields remained too wet for farmers to get their tractors and sprayers into the fields. He heard of a few instances where it was four or five days before the fields were dry enough.

But with the ability to use drones, Watson said farmers could apply fungicides as soon as the skies cleared.

“That would just take the worry out of everything,” Watson said, adding safety would remain paramount.

The rains have been especially challenging for organic growers like Tawse, since the applications rely on contact, Van Muyen said.

“I hope this isn’t our future because it’s really hard to manage, especially organically because we don’t have a lot of systemic sprays. All of our stuff is contact and every time we get over an inch of rain - which we’ve had four times in the last four weeks - it washes everything off,” she said.

“So you have to restart.”

Despite the challenges Mother Nature has presented to grape growers, Van Muyen said her heart went out to many of the other farmers. The stormy summer wreaked havoc on cherry producers, and Van Muyen said she worried about other orchard growers, noting she’d seen the leaves on peach trees starting to turn yellow.

And in fact, that is a concern among experts. Last month Jayasankar (Jay) Subramanian, a professor of tree fruit breeding and biotechnology in the University of Guelph’s Department of Plant Agriculture, warned this summer’s storms could impact tender fruit crops next year, affecting both farmers and consumers.

“The widespread feeling is that due to the anticipated loss of trees, there will be a decline in production as soon as next year,” he said in a news release.

“Almost certainly, we will see prices higher in the next year.”

And not only next year, but Subramanian warned the effects could be felt for a while.

“One of my major worries is the availability of trees to plant from next year,” he said. “Some of the nurseries are flooded, and with the demands for fresh trees expected to rise, there will be a lack of grafts available.”

That means the effects of this year’s storms could be felt for the next several years.