US(GE): Weird winter threatens Georgia’s peaches, pecans and blueberries
The state’s pecan, peach and blueberry crops are threatened by too many warm days and too much water, growers from across Georgia said this week. The final month of 2015 was the second-rainiest December on record, with consistently warm days and nights.
Now, with weather about to become wintry, growers hope their crops haven’t suffered too much damage.
Late fall and early winter’s hard rains drowned pecan harvest projections, said Ocilla grower Randy Hudson. A fourth-generation grower, Hudson is president of the National Pecan Growers Council.
“Oh my Lord, I’ve got ducks swimming in pecan orchards,” Hudson said on Wednesday, as more rains swept the state. “We never, in our wildest imaginations, thought there would be so much rain, or snow, in the pecan belt.”
The council represents growers from North Carolina to California. Nearly every state in the organization has experienced bad weather during the late-year harvest, Hudson said.
Georgia, he said, has been particularly hard-hit; groves are too wet to accommodate heavy harvesting machinery. Growers had anticipated harvesting about 130 million pounds this season but now hope to take in 80 million pounds — an estimated $100 million shortfall.
“This has been the most difficult harvest I can remember,” said Hudson, whose groves 190 miles southeast of Atlanta encompass 1,500 acres. “I’ve got ducks harvesting the pecans.”
The warm weather has bedeviled blueberry and peach growers, said Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Grower’s Association. The organization represents about 350 farms and packing facilities across the state.
It’s hardly a minor irritation. Blueberries are a $335 million crop in Georgia, the nation’s largest producer of the tiny blue fruit. Georgia’s last peach crop netted growers $53 million.
Blueberries and peaches require periods of cooler weather — 45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower — to create healthy blooms, Hall said. The number of necessary chill hours differs among berry varieties, Hall said, but none has had enough.
“Right now, we’re not close” to sufficient chill hours, he said. “Our blueberry and peach growers, they are concerned.”
Bob Welker, who owns and operates Berry Good Farms in Tifton, spent the last day of the year in much the same way he’d passed the previous weeks. He worried that early-blooming blueberries might be susceptible to frost later this winter.
“I’ve got blueberries in bloom right now,” he said.
So does Ron Putman, who manages Miller’s Blueberry Farm in Watkinsville, near Athens. The pick-your-own farm, comprising six acres, is a popular destination for families from the metro area.
“Bud formation is just advancing too rapidly,” he said.
Drew Echols, general manager of Jaemor Farms, is wishing for some colder days — drier ones, too. He and other family members grow 150 acres of peaches in Alto, 70 miles northeast of Atlanta.
“We’re still waiting on winter,” he said. “We still need some cold weather.”
Some sunny days would be good, too. Mature trees can withstand the recent torrents because they are firmly established in the soil, Echols said. But the younger trees?
“They don’t like wet feet,” he said.
Some of those trees may not survive, but Jaemor’s growers won’t know until spring, when living trees bear leaves and blossoms.
“That’s a struggle I know we’ll have this spring,” he said.
Growers in central Georgia also would like to see a change in the weather, said Duke Lane III. He’s head of the Georgia Peach Council, a consortium of growers.
Lane said he’d checked with other farmers in the council, and they agreed: a cold snap would be timely. Peach trees, he said, need a period of dormancy. “It’s like sleep, really,” Lane said.
Lane, whose family has been in the peach business for more than a century, counselled patience. Colder days, he said, are imminent.
“There is some cause for concern,” he said, “but it’s too early to hit the panic button.”
Source: www.albanyherald.com/