Growing pumpkins and apples with intense heat and little rainfall

DANVILLE, Ind. — Many farmers are taking a look back at how recent weather patterns have affected crop production.

“It’s been a really interesting growing season but that is sort of the norm,” said Calvin Beasley, the owner of Beasley’s Orchard in Danville. “We are in Central Indiana, so we have erratic weather, extreme weather events all the time.”

Beasley’s Orchard has 250 acres of crops. That includes 45 acres of pumpkins and 45 acres of apples. Certain weather conditions that are good for some crops may not be suitable for others.  

“So for us, we have to be able to adjust constantly on the fly,” Beasley said. “We have to be diverse. That’s why we don’t grow just one or two of these crops because something that is bad for apples like a lot of heat and rainfall could be really good for sweet corn. No matter what is happening, we usually have one crop that is benefiting from the current conditions, so that helps mitigate a little bit of the risk, especially (for) crop production in this area.”

Heat is one of the factors that farmers have had to deal with this year. The heat can be beneficial for some crops like pumpkins. Beasley’s Orchard pushed back planting this year due to a rainy May and June, so the heat at the end of the summer and into the early fall was actually a good thing. 

“The heat for pumpkins is actually a huge blessing,” Beasley said. “We actually delayed our pumpkin planting because of all of that wet weather (in late May and June) so we didn’t finish planting pumpkins until July, so 2-3 weeks behind schedule for us. If we hadn’t had all of that heat, we probably would not have accumulated enough growing degree days to mature the pumpkin crop so that was actually a big blessing.”

On the other hand, for apples, heat presents more of a challenge. 

“Heat for apples around harvest can be really challenging because we are trying to balance the internal ripeness of the apples with the external appearance or the color,” Beasley said. “When we get really hot sometimes that internal ripeness will accelerate faster than the color, so we have to pick fruit that is mature but maybe doesn’t necessarily look how we would like it to look ideally.”

Rainfall also has a big impact on crop production. Some crops are more drought tolerant than others, like pumpkins. On the other hand, apples can see a decrease in size if they don’t get enough water. Luckily, the lack of rainfall hasn’t been a big issue for a lot of farmers thanks to the irrigation systems they have in place. 

“We had a lot of rainfall early in the growing season, so the soil was charged up and that really drove early growth and when it got dry later on, we were able to use all of our irrigation infrastructure to keep the crops going,” Beasley said.

Each year presents its own challenges and it’s hard to know what to expect since Indiana is known for its unpredictable weather. Thankfully, Beasley said 2025 turned out to be a good year with no major freeze events.

“In the past five years, we have had two major freeze events and a major hailstorm on the farm that cost us our entire apple crop,” he said. “When we think about weather challenges relative to those events, we feel really lucky for where we are. Any year we can get through the growing season with all our crops intact, we count that as a blessing.”

Like Beasley’s Orchard, many places throughout Central Indiana offer apple picking through the end of October. Additionally, pumpkins will be harvested all the way through Halloween. To learn more, click here.