In early July I couldn’t wait to get started as the new hub coordinator for Riverdale. It’s safe to say  I was itchin’ to get pickin’. Although I’d missed the cherries, serviceberries, and mulberries because of our unusually warm spring, I was still looking forward to the next crop: apricots!

I began scouring Riverdale looking for apricot trees. I kept looking…and looking, but to no avail.I finally located one apricot tree with the help of Silvia (one of our amazing Supreme Gleaners), but to our dismay we found it had a total of three apricots on it. Our St. Paul’s coordinator Beau, contacted all of the registered apricot tree owners in his hub only to find similar responses: “no crop this year,” or “it’s not even worth your while to come out.”

So what happened to Toronto’s apricots?

One homeowner thought her tree had fireblight. However this bacterial disease generally isn’t a problem in Toronto, and it usually only affects apples and pears, so that wasn’t the likely culprit. My quest led to Torrie Warner, a Beamsville fruit grower. Torries sent me some ideas. He said the most likely culprit was –what else — the weather!

Apricots are among the earliest fruit trees to flower, and have a narrow window when they need the right conditions to pollinate and set fruit. Can you remember back to our unusually early spring weather? There were two nights in the second week of May where the temperature dipped below one degree Celcius here in Toronto. Niagara’s trees are a little bit better protected and came through the frost alright, but Toronto’s were hit hard. Growing apricots is risky business, especially near the Northern limits of their range.

There isn’t anything we can do about this year’s crop — save to eat some locally produced Niagara varieties. But, like most other farmers, next year we’ll just have to hope for the best.