A month after a bitter early-February freeze, Georgia farmers
have taken it on the chin
again. Another deep freeze and damaging winds blasted the
state’s vegetable, fruit and
grain crops March 8-9.
"Every county, every field and every stage of Vidalia
onions have been hurt,"
said Rick Hartley, Toombs County director of the University of
Georgia Extension Service.
"The total impact to Georgia’s economy could exceed $100
million in losses."
Hartley said freeze itself may not have badly damaged Vidalia
onions.
"The onions are alive but suffered extreme damage to
their leaves," he said.
"The wind and sand caused more physical damage than the
cold, but the cold damage
won’t be visible for several weeks."
Even onions that stay healthy may be lost in the end, Hartley
said.
"March temperatures of 20 degrees and a chill factor of
zero degrees generally
trigger the reproductive mechanism in Vidalia onions," he
said. "This causes
them to flower," he said. "And onions which flower
aren’t considered
harvestable."
Vidalia onion farmers "could lose as much as $50
million," Hartley said, if
the seed stems show up as growers fear. "They’ve already
lost half of a 14,000-acre
crop."
Terry Kelley, an Extension vegetable specialist in Tifton,
agreed that the seed-stem
threat is Vidalia onion growers’ main concern from the latest
freeze.
"But I’m still concerned that it may have hurt us worse
than we think," he
said. "I don’t think we’ve seen all the damage yet from the
February freeze."
The freeze hit other vegetables hard, too.
"Much of the mustard and turnip greens were replanted
after the last freeze,"
Kelley said. "As young and tender as these plants were, we
could see some
problems."
Collards, cabbage and kale crops were also damaged, he said,
but not as much as the
mustard and turnips. Like onions, collards and cabbage may have
problems with flowering
later.
"We’re going to have a later crop of just about every
winter vegetable," he
said. "We just haven’t had the temperatures for
development."
The state’s peaches will be hard-pressed to appear as more
than a shadow of a normal
crop.
"What percent of a crop we’ll have, we don’t know,"
said M.E.
"Butch" Ferree, an Extension peach specialist in Fort
Valley. "Some
varieties are totally wiped out, and we can find buds on
others."
Assessing the peach crop damage is tough, he said.
"It’s not easy to see. We have to look at a tiny
flower," he said. "And
it’s a miracle that we’ve got something to look at, with the
weather we’ve had.
"It will be a few days before we can know the damage any
better," he said.
"And then we’ve got four more weeks of weather that could
hurt us. We don’t feel like
we’re out of the woods until Easter."
Brooks County Extension Director Johnny Whiddon, whose
farmers are among the state’s
top peach growers, said losses would likely be heavy.
"We really won’t know until the blooms that were killed
fall off and we can get a
better look at it," Whiddon said. "But the best
projection we can make right now
puts (Brooks County) losses at 75 percent to 80
percent."
Dewey Lee, an Extension grains specialist in Tifton, said the
state’s wheat crop
appears to have been damaged.
"We won’t know for several more days exactly how much of
the crop was hurt,"
he said.
Wheat plants with grain heads eight to 10 inches above the
soil were most affected.
"It’s most likely the grain heads froze," he said.
Once they freeze, they die.
But wheat is able to make up for lost grain heads. "Just
because we lose, for
example, 80 percent of the grain heads from freezing," he
said, "doesn’t
mean we’ll lose the same percentage of our yield."
