The farming year of the highland orchards, month by month: when the apples, cherries, pears and stone fruit are picked, the winter freeze and the rains behind them, and the markers that open the year.
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The farming year of the Danniyeh highlands, month by month: when the apples, cherries, pears and stone fruit are picked, the rains and the winter freeze behind them, and the markers that open the year — the winter pruning, the spring blossom, the flocks going up to the high pastures, and the autumn apple harvest that is much of the district's living. Written for the families here whose year still turns on the orchard and the flock, and for anyone coming back to it.
It's July
Harvests: Cherries (كرز) · Harvests: Summer stone fruit — apricots, peaches, plums (مشمش، دراق، خوخ) · Sows: Potatoes (بطاطا)
dry season
The district's signature cash crop. Many local trees bear heavily one year and lightly the next (المعاومة), and much of the crop goes into cold storage and is sold on through the spring — so you see apples in the shops long after the trees are bare. The Danniyeh highlands pick among the last in the country.
Source: Lebanese Army magazine (apple varieties and picking months); Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture fresh-produce calendar, checked 4 July 2026 (today).
The first big fruit of the year, and a highland speciality — the cooler, higher orchards pick after the valleys. A short, intense season.
Source: Lebanese cherry-variety windows (smallfarmers.trade); Ministry of Agriculture produce calendar, checked 4 July 2026 (today).
A late-summer and autumn fruit. Qarsita, in the high Miniyeh-Danniyeh mountains, is one of Lebanon's leading pear-growing places.
Source: Qarsita as a leading Danniyeh pear district; Ministry of Agriculture produce calendar, checked 4 July 2026 (today).
The summer stone fruit, ripening in turn from early to late summer and staggered by altitude, so a fruit runs longer here than any single orchard's few weeks.
Source: Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture — Lebanese Fresh Fruits and Vegetables calendar, checked 4 July 2026 (today).
Table and wine grapes off the warmer slopes, picked in late summer and autumn; the higher the vine, the later the pick.
Source: Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture produce calendar; Lebanon Traveler (wine harvest), checked 4 July 2026 (today).
The highland staple, grown in two cycles once the ground is workable — a spring planting and a later summer one, each harvested a few months on.
Source: International Potato Center — Lebanon highland double-cycle pattern (Bekaa analog); Ministry of Agriculture, checked 4 July 2026.
sowing harvest
rainy season dry season frost risk
How the orchards are watered
Danniyeh's water is its signature asset — hundreds of springs and the winter snow that feeds them. Orchards are watered from springs, wells and stored snowmelt, and the turns are each village's and each farmer's own arrangement, not a published timetable. This page describes the usual shape of the year, not a watering schedule — and when the taps run dry in the villages, it is the delivery that has failed, not the water.
These are the usual months, not a fixed calendar. The district runs from about 950 m to over 1,400 m, so the high orchards blossom and pick weeks after the lower ones, and every year's weather shifts things. The harvest months rest on Lebanese sources; the bloom, pruning and spraying months follow the regional pattern — confirm with your own trees and the growers' cooperative.
Source: Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture fresh-produce calendar; Lebanese Army magazine (apple varieties); smallfarmers.trade (cherries); International Potato Center (potatoes); reporting on the apple export route and North Lebanon herding. Compiled by Town Tools., checked 4 July 2026 (today).