Fruit
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Fruit producers in Georgia may be interested in seeing our summary of chilling hours for all 87 UGA weather stations in one place. You can find the complete list which provides chill hours from November 1 through yesterday at https://www.georgiaweather.net/?content=ch. It includes the last four years so you can see how this year compares to…
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According to The Packer, “Growing organic strawberries has never been easy for Florida farmers, but the task got a lot more challenging in late December, when a fungus called Pestalotiopsis took hold in some of the state’s berry fields.” Their article from earlier this week noted that the growth of the fungus exploded during Christmas…
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The Southeast Farm Press discussed the take-over of the top production spot for pecans by Mexico this year in an article here. The loss is due in large part to the destruction of 27 percent of Georgia’s pecan orchards due to Hurricane Michael. Some additional production has started in the southwestern US and California but…
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Producers in the Southeast are always keeping an eye out for the next new crop they might be able to incorporate into their farms. In recent years we have heard a lot about satsumas and olives here as well as commercial production of pomegranates. Here is a story from Vegetable and Specialty Crop News on…
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In my job I work with a number of producers that are looking for new crops to grow in Georgia. One of these crops is satsumas, a mandarin orange that grows well in Georgia because it is cold resistant down to 15 F. The satsuma crop is expected to hit Georgia markets this week, with…
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Yahoo Finance News posted an interesting story about the problems that peach farmers in Greece are having due to fluctuating weather. Heavy rains have caused some peach skins to split, reducing value and introducing rot. High temperatures have also increased disease and rot problems. Other farmers have also seen increased problems in the past few…
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The latest report on Georgia’s pecan harvest shows that this year’s harvest is better than last year’s, when Hurricane Michael dropped many nuts and destroyed huge numbers of pecan trees. However, this year’s production is still only about half of what it was prior to Hurricane Michael, and it is likely to be many years…