Michigan's Fruit Ridge

How apples came

The Ridge was settled in the 1840s. John Symes, born in Devon, arrived at Sparta in June 1845, the Wylie brothers from Madison County, New York, that November, and Lyman Ballard of Orange County, New York, in 1850⁴. Orchards went in beside the first homesteads, and by 1853 William Wylie’s North Kent Nursery at Sparta was advertising apple trees. The federal farm census of 1880 found nearly every farm in Sparta Township with at least six apple trees, the biggest orchards with 350 to 375 bearing trees⁴.

Peaches long rivalled apples: the Bloomer brothers first planted them on the Ridge, and in 1900 Sparta’s peaches outyielded its apples, though the hardier apples kept gaining ground⁴. Before cold storage, apples for keeping had to be dried or canned: Meeker and Wood’s cider mill and fruit evaporator at Sparta was working by about 1892 and dried fruit from September to November⁴. In 1929 the growers organised as the Peach Ridge Fruit Growers Association. A newspaper of 1941 described their “Peach Ridge fruit belt”, taking in Alpine, Sparta, Tyrone, Walker and Plainfield townships in Kent and Chester and Wright in Ottawa, as only about 11 km long and 3 km wide, and expected “at least 750,000 bushels of apples” from it that autumn; the district’s growers were setting out 100,000 or more young fruit trees a year. In autumn 1944, short of hands, they brought in about 400 German prisoners of war, camped at Sparta, to pick the peaches and apples of Kent, Ottawa and Muskegon counties⁴.

When the legislature made the apple blossom the state flower in 1897, its resolution declared that “Michigan apples have gained a worldwide reputation”, and noted that a fragrant wild apple, Pyrus coronaria, is native to the state¹³.

How they’re grown

The Ridge, by its growers’ own description, is about 13 km wide and 32 km long, some 409 km² north-west of Grand Rapids. It takes in seven townships in four counties, Alpine, Sparta and Tyrone in Kent, Chester and Wright in Ottawa, Casnovia in Muskegon and Ashland in Newaygo, with about two-thirds of it in Kent. The growers put it at more than 240 m above sea level and about 40 km from Lake Michigan¹. The state agriculture department’s chief scientist explains why it suits fruit. The Ridge is a moraine, laid down where a lobe of the ice sheet ended, and its loamy soil is rich in clay, holding moisture yet draining well on the slopes. When cold fronts pass, the cold air settles in the low ground, so the trees bloom later and escape spring frosts, and in autumn the Ridge stays warmer².

NASS’s 2022 inventory counted about 15,380 ha of apples in Michigan, with 17.6 million trees on 850 farms. Two-thirds lay in the west central district, and Kent County alone had about 4,410 ha, up from 3,400 in 2011; Ottawa had about 1,460⁵. The 2022 census, which counts every farm, gives Kent about 5,730 ha, 31% of Michigan’s apple orchard, after a rise of 46% since 2017⁶.

Orchards are growing denser. Dwarfing M.9 rootstocks carried 4.6 million trees in 2022, more than any other, and the 1,050 ha planted from 2020 to 2022 held nearly 2.5 million trees, about 2,370 a hectare, twice the state’s average⁵. Partly because of such plantings, Michigan ranked first or second among the surveyed states in yield in three of the five seasons to 2025⁸. Michigan State University’s Clarksville Research Center, opened in 1974 on 178 ha, works on variety development, fruit thinning, dwarfing rootstocks, pest management and pruning⁹, and MSU Extension’s apple maturity programme samples orchards through the harvest¹¹. One packer sorts its fruit with cameras that take colour and infrared pictures of each apple³.

Its growers’ association, REAP, was founded in 1998, when imports of apple juice concentrate from China had cost Michigan its concentrate markets and a windstorm that May had damaged trees and farm buildings¹⁴.

What’s picked

In 2025 Michigan had about 14,970 ha of bearing apple trees and produced about 483,000 tonnes for sale or use, about a tenth of the US commercial crop, worth $322 million; it ranked third, after Washington and New York, though it had out-produced New York in 2023⁷. The record was the 2022 crop, about 617,000 tonnes⁸. More of the 2025 crop was processed, about 256,000 tonnes, than sold fresh, about 227,000⁷.

By area, Gala and Honeycrisp lead Michigan’s orchards, with 17.6% and 17.2% in 2022, and Red Delicious, the leader in 2011 with 18.1%, has fallen to 10.2%; Golden Delicious had 7.7%, and Idared, Fuji, Jonagold and McIntosh about 5 to 6% each. Honeycrisp now has the most trees, 4.84 million against Gala’s 3.73 million⁵. By volume, an industry forecast put Gala, Fuji and Red Delicious at 41% of the 2025/26 crop⁸. Northern Spy, raised from a seedling orchard planted about 1800 at East Bloomfield, New York¹², is grown here as a late processing apple, mature in mid- to late October and kept in controlled-atmosphere stores¹¹; its orchards shrank from 4.0% of the state’s apple area in 2011 to 2.1% in 2022⁵.

MSU Extension’s normal peak harvest dates for the Grand Rapids region, centred on Sparta, run from Paulared on 24 August through Gala (10 September), Honeycrisp (18 September) and Red Delicious (5 October) to Goldrush on 1 November; picking starts before and ends after these peaks. In 2026 the trees at Sparta were in full bloom on 24 and 25 April, and McIntosh was expected to peak on 31 August, 16 days early¹⁰.

On the table

Many Ridge farms sell at the gate: the growers’ association lists some 40 farm markets and event spaces, and cider mills stand along the Ridge²; in autumn visitors come to pick their own³.

For about twenty years, until 1971, the Peach Ridge growers held an Apple Smorgasbord each September, by invitation, on a different farm each year. Farm wives cooked more than 200 apple dishes from old German and Swedish recipes, and in 1953 the cooks had 4,237 requests for them, which MSU’s extension office helped to print and post. Gerald R. Ford, then a congressman, was a regular guest⁴.

Notes

• Large farms dominate: in 2022 the 41 Michigan farms with at least 81 ha of apples held 39% of the state’s apple area⁵.
• Phil Klenk, who began orcharding on the Ridge in 1894, built one of its first modern refrigerated stores⁴.
• The 1897 resolution chose the apple blossom partly because “a refined sentiment” seemed to call for a state flower¹³.

Where the sources disagree

• Sixty per cent. The Ridge’s growers, and Kent County after them, say it produces about 60% of Michigan’s apples^1,3. NASS publishes nothing for the Ridge itself, and the four counties it touches held about half of the state’s apple area in 2022, by my sum^5,6; the claim may refer to production or to a wider Ridge.
• Kent County’s orchards. NASS’s fruit inventory gives about 4,410 ha in 2022⁵; its census of the same year, which counts every farm, about 5,730 ha⁶.
• Where the Ridge ends. REAP lists seven townships¹; the 1941 “Peach Ridge fruit belt” included Walker and Plainfield⁴, and WOOD TV runs the Ridge from Walker to Grant². The sources read do not say when the name Fruit Ridge came into use.
• Elevation. The 240 m is converted from the growers’ “greater than 800 feet”¹; no survey figure was found.
• Estimates. Tonnes and hectares are converted from NASS’s imperial units; the tenth of the US crop, the trees per hectare and the 31% are computed from NASS tables^5,6,7. The harvest months follow MSU’s normal peak dates for the region¹⁰.