University of Georgia
scientists said the rain
Hurricane Earl dropped across the state provided desperately
needed water to Georgia
crops. But we could have done without the wind.
The wind hit Georgia cotton hard, said Steve Brown,
an Extension
Service agronomist with
the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences.
"We’ve seen fields with 40 to 50 pounds — maybe up to
75 pounds — of the lint on
the ground," Brown said. Rain saturated the cotton and made
it fall more easily when
the wind hit it.
Fortunately, most of the crop was not yet defoliated.
"Since the leaves were still
on plants in so many fields," Brown said, "they
protected the lint from getting
blown off."
Brown said the ’98 crop is ahead of usual. Hot weather has
made bolls mature faster,
"so there’s a bit more ready than usual at this time. Earl
provided rain we needed in
late-planted nonirrigated fields that were getting mighty
dry."
UGA peanut scientist John Baldwin said much
the same thing: fields were getting dry. The rain was "a
little late for a lot of the
crop," Baldwin said. "But it’s almost always
welcome."
Hot, dry weather made peanuts mature faster, too, he said.
Some farmers had already dug
some fields in preparation for harvesting.
"Now, with another system brewing (in the Gulf of
Mexico), farmers are making
plans to make sure they can get their peanuts out of the field
without quality loss,"
he said.
The rains, though, will help finish out a lot of Georgia’s
peanuts. "The weather
from now through the beginning of October will make or break our
peanuts this year,"
Baldwin said.
Many Georgia farmers still have 1997 fresh on their minds. It
started raining last year
in mid-September and didn’t stop long enough to harvest until
April.
"They remember that clearly," Baldwin said.
"And they’re making harvest
plans with that possibility in mind."
The experts say Earl was good for cattle farmers, too.
"Our pastures were very
dry," said Robert
Stewart, an Extension Service
animal scientist. "This rain will allow many of our farmers
to make another cutting
of hay, which almost all of them are short on."
The rain also helped refill many farm ponds and branches that
supply water to Georgia
cattle herds.
Extension horticulturist Gerard Krewer said the
rain couldn’t have come at a better time for next year’s
blueberry crop. The bushes are
setting fruit buds now, he said, and their water need was
critical.
Earl wasn’t as kind, though, to crops higher above the
ground. Pecan trees were
hard-hit.
"We’ve seen orchards where as many as 200 trees were
blown down," said
pecan horticulturist.
"Cyclonic winds that spun off Earl damaged trees and
knocked off a lot of
pecans."
The worst effect on pecans was that the winds came after the
rain. Up to 8 inches of
rain saturated and softened the soil in pecan orchards. That
made the trees more
vulnerable to the 60 mph winds that came after the skies had
cleared.
"A lot of us breathed a sigh of relief a bit too
early," Crocker said.
"The wind really caught us off guard, although there was
nothing we could have done
to prevent the wind damage."
Crocker said so far, pecan farmers from Lee, Houston, Sumter
and Ben Hill counties
report the most damage. "But we’re not certain yet how that
damage will affect the
crop this year," he said.
