Crops
-
Peanut planting is about to get underway across many parts of the South as soil temperatures in south Georgia and Alabama generally rise above 70 F during the day and no cold weather is expected. In general, planting begins around mid-April once the threat of cold weather has passed, since peanut germination is poor at…
-
The Associated Press ran an article this weekend describing some of the damage to peach crops in central Georgia from the cold snap in late March. Jeff Cook, the Extension agent in Peach and Taylor Counties, noted that roughly a third of the peaches in 10,000 acres may have been lost due to the cold…
-
As predicted, freezing temperatures made it down to Macon and even farther south this morning. The map below from the Georgia Automated Weather Network at 7:30 am shows a broad area of cold temperatures covering most of the northern half of Georgia as well as some areas to the south. Fortunately, the southern part of…
-
With the onset of spring, farmers are busy getting out into the fields and starting their planting. Variable weather across the nation has led to a variety of weather- and climate-related impacts on agriculture. Here are some links to stories on some of these impacts. AgWeb reported that soggy soils from heavy rains in the…
-
The National Weather Service has a new experimental product available which provides 6-day forecasts of evapotranspiration in a zoomable map format. A weekly total is also available. You can access this product at https://preview.weather.gov/graphical/. You can find the FRET daily values by looking under Agriculture at the bottom of the product pull-down menu on the top…
-
If you have a home garden or plant according to the USDA plant hardiness zones, you might be interested in this recent article from NOAA’s Climate.gov (link). In the story, the impacts of changing normals every ten years on planting zones is explained and maps show the differences between the old planting dates and the…
-
Even though we’re past the average date for last frost in parts of the Southeast, it is not too late for a cold blast to move through the area. Early signs for next weekend, Saturday March 28 and Sunday March 29, show that another surge of cold air is expected to move into the area…