Stone fruits doing well on MI farm

If you like fresh fruit then this summer is for you. Michigan fruit farmers say they have seen a good production of their stone fruit this season and right now is prime time for picking.
This is something they have not seen for about the past three years because weather patterns have not been just right.

“We had a really mild winter and a long spring so we had excellent pollination on some of the crops we had not been fruiting for a couple or three years,” said Farm Manager at Lehman's Orchard Steve Lecklider.

The past couple seasons is exactly what was needed for a good production of stone fruit this summer. A stone fruit is a type of fruit that has a flesh on the outside and stone on the inside.

“A perfect weather condition would be if you had a really nice mild winter, plenty of chilling hours and then you had a long spring that was very gradual,” said Lecklider.

Right now the farm has 35 varieties of peaches and six varieties of nectarines over the span of about eight acres.

Lehman's Orchard is also a U-pick farm also which means people can pick their own produce.

"They’re kind of rediscovering some of the different types of fruits that we have. So we have flat peaches, we have both white and yellow flat peaches,” Lecklider said of customers.

It is expected that the peaches and nectarine picking season will last towards the end of September.

Lehman's Orchard is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon until 5 p.m.

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