Drought may have influenced growing season, fall harvest

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) –

Fall festivities are underway here in southeastern Minnesota, but this year’s drought may have played a role in the growing season for some orchards. Sekapp Orchards is getting ready for one of its busiest weekends and Owner Fred Kapauf explains what he had to do to mitigate the dry conditions during the growing season.

“It really affected our vine crops, a lot of them did not come out of the ground until the tenth of July so they are either nonexistent or very late,” said Kapauf. These pumpkins you see here, these couple little patches here, I watered for two weeks straight after planting them, so they grew well, and we got out of the ground and growing,” he said.

Kappauf said that despite the ongoing drought the harvest season has been abundant for Sekapp Orchards. There are plenty of apples and pumpkins to pick from so far, but the apples that did not grow as large from the drought will have more time to mature and be harvested in the next few weeks. Plenty of produce and flowers are available at the orchard too.

According to Sekapp Orchard’s website they are open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week until the beginning of November. The orchard also has fall festivities for the family that include a corn stalk maze that spans about three acres and a straw bale maze.

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