2025 Pennsylvania Tree Fruit Maturity Report - October 21

Wrapping Up 2025

After evaluating the status of the crop last week, the maturity report project lead—Dr. Shan Kumar—decided that the season was winding down, and the weekly reports were to be put to bed for 2025.

The drawing to a close of the season is a bit early this year, with many orchards already harvesting late-season varieties such as Nittany, Evercrisp®, Pink Lady®, Granny Smith, and GoldRush. Therefore, the October 13th report has unexpectedly become the final set of evaluations for this year.

And what an interesting year. The frequent rains of May and June gave way to a prolonged dry spell that affected sizing in many orchards throughout the state. A few heavy rainfalls were then sprinkled in, just in time to cause cracking in Gala and other crack-prone varieties that were otherwise ready for harvest. On the other hand, the spate of cool days and cooler nights produced some rich color development, particularly in the redder strains of Honeycrisp, increasing their appeal and market value.

2026 Improvements

While we hope that you found these reports interesting and useful for making harvest decisions, science is built on evidence, not expectation. To that end, you, our weekly reader, have the opportunity to tell us directly if they were informative to you. And consequently, you will influence reporting in 2026.

Please consider giving us your direct feedback. This is, after all, Penn State – where everything has an evaluation survey attached to it! When clicking on the link, a 12-question survey will appear to collect your thoughts on how to improve the report.

Many of the questions are multiple choice, but there are open-ended ones where you may make direct recommendations.

This includes the chance to make recommendations for which varieties and cultivars/strains to test. We eliminated a few varieties tested in 2024 to streamline operations. Perhaps you think we eliminated too many. Let us know that.

It concludes with a comment box where you may address issues that do not fit nicely into any of the four main areas pre-selected by us: timing of these reports, varieties evaluated, locations served, and measurements acquired. Let us know that, too.

The whole thing should take about 5-10 minutes, depending on the level of detail you wish to provide. Unless you are volunteering your orchard to be part of next year's collaborators, it is 100% anonymous.

A summary report may be issued next week that would address any concerns raised in the survey responses received and would provide the complete data set for the entire season. The latter would be for reference purposes in 2026.

Thank You

We wish to single out our 2025 collaborators, without whom these reports would not have been possible:

• Brad Hollabaugh and Hector Mateos @ Hollabaugh Bros., Inc. - Biglerville, PA
• David and Kyle Benner @ El Vista Orchards - Fairfield, PA
• Alfred Brubaker @ Greendale Orchards - Waynesboro, PA
• Steve Frecon @ Frecon Farms - Boyertown, PA
• Ben Keim @ Keim Orchard - Boyertown, PA

Fruit was also collected from two Penn State research centers:

• The Fruit Research and Extension Center  - Biglerville, PA
• The Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center (Rock Springs) - Pennsylvania Furnace, PA

Thank you for being a faithful reader, and we hope that your season was profitable. We will see you at the Mid-Atlantic Fruit & Vegetable Convention and at our Winter Fruit Schools!