Fruit
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Drought in England has led to extremely low reservoir levels and concerns about whether they are likely to rise enough to support fruit and vegetable farming next year, according to a recent story in The Guardian. Farmers are considering their crop rotations for next year with an eye to reduced availability of water, and some…
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As the earth’s climate changes, strawberry growers are having to deal with temperatures that are warmer than in the past. In California, they are also having to deal with increased salinity of the soil due to irrigation, leading to negative impacts on new plants. But with strawberries as a very high-value crop, producers are using…
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I’ve done a lot of interviews on the loss of Georgia’s peach crop this year due to a warm winter followed by two March frosts after the trees bloomed early. So I was interested to read this story in Growing Produce about the significant losses of their peaches too due to the winter weather this…
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Extreme weather this year is not just affecting agriculture in the United States. Farmers in many other parts of the world are also experience tragic losses of fruit, honey, and other agricultural products due to extreme heat, rain, hail, and other weather phenomena. Here is an example from Euro News about the loss of fruit…
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Here’s an interesting story about how Maine blueberry producers are using the wild blueberries they harvest to create a new product–blueberry wine. I was interested to read that wild blueberries are not like the commercial blueberries we grow in the Southeast because they are truly wild and are not planted like commercial blueberry plants but…
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While the March frost did tremendous damage to peaches in Georgia, the blueberry crop did much better and is providing a good yield of the luscious crops. According to this story in the Farm Monitor (including video), most blueberries were not far out of dormancy and the temperatures in Southeast Georgia did not get as…
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I often get asked how the number of chill hours in Georgia is changing over time. Here is a great article written by Chunxian Chen from the Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Lab in Byron, GA, in Growing Produce that answers that question. The author shows that, as expected, the number of chill hours…
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As promised, here are some recent stories about peaches from the Southeast and other production areas of the country. The peach harvest in Georgia was hit very hard this year, but other areas also were badly affected by weather. WABE: Georgia peach crop decimated by bad weather, warming climate Georgia Farm Bureau: Significant decline in…