Fruit
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While we’ve been suffering under May-like conditions in the East (if you can call this suffering), California has seen extremely cold temperatures, including frost in some areas that don’t often get it. So farmers have been busy running wind machines and other frost protection to keep their citrus fruit from freezing. Temperatures got into the…
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Here’s a very long but interesting story about Stewart Resnick, the biggest farmer in the US and the man behind Cuties and Halo citrus, Pom Wonderful pomegranates, and the biggest producer of pistachios in the country. He owns 281 square miles of California plus a number of international holdings. As you can imagine, the biggest…
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The Georgia Farm Monitor has an interesting 3-minute video on continuing clean-up activities of Georgia pecan farmers following the devastation from Hurricane Irma, which not only blew down many nuts but also uprooted trees and damaged equipment. Supplies of replacement trees are also limited due to the high demand. You can view it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CbIQLYfDGQ&feature=em-subs_digest. …
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ABC News has a new video out featuring Ginger Zee discussing the long-term decline in orange production in Florida. In the last year it has been seriously impacted by Hurricane Irma but even before that citrus was declining due to citrus greening and drought. You can read more and watch the video at https://abcnews.go.com/US/floridas-orange-crops-quietly-dying-decade-growers-fight/story?id=52612301. (Personal note–Ginger…
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Atlas Obscura has another interesting story this week about a small park near St. Louis filled with four pecan trees that survived the 1993 floods. When the area was rebuilt after the flood, the community protected the 100-year-old trees with a new levee and a park to protect them. You can read more about it…
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The Packer noted in a story this week that strong winds in California last fall have affected the crop of lemons harvested by increasing scarring of the skin, which reduced the value of the crop, although the juice quality was otherwise unaffected. Some lemons were also destroyed by the Western wildfires, which were also driven…
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I am working on a talk that I will be giving at the UGA Extension Winter School on Wednesday about freeze protection for fruit; my co-presenters are Drs. Erick Smith and Tim Coolong. In my part of the talk I describe the difference between advective and radiative freezes. Advective freezes occur when cold and (often)…