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The latest estimates from the USDA regarding the orange harvest this year have dropped the expected yield by 7.4 percent, to 50 million boxes, from last month’s estimate. Producers generally considered last month’s estimates too high because all of the accumulated losses from Hurricane Irma have not yet been seen, much less quantified. Some delayed…
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How old can grapevines get and still produce a good crop? Atlas Obscura has a short but interesting story this week on a vine in England that has been producing sweet dessert grapes for over 250 years. When they were originally produced, only royalty could eat the fruit, but now it is available to the…
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Ten months through 2017, most of the Southeast is still on a record-setting warm pace, even though the El Niño is long gone. Rainfall overall has been very close to normal, although with above normal temperatures it’s not surprising that we’ve seen some dry soils across parts of the region. You can read more at…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
A recent news release from the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences described the efforts of Dr. Tim Brenneman to introduce the production of truffles to Georgia pecan orchards. You’ve probably heard of the fancy European truffles that are used to flavor foods like risotto, but may not know that the roots…
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According to my friend John Feldt of Blue Water Outlook, we are entering the time of year which is historically the cloudiest for the majority of the United States. Where I grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, late fall and early winter was typically the cloudiest, in part due to the passage of frequent low…
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You may have heard the the recent trend to warmer temperatures across the US is affecting the range of native birds as well as different tree species across the country. But how much are they changing? You can use the NOAA Climate Toolkit to explore those changes in their atlas for birds and trees. You…
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Reports on damage caused by the wind and rain of Hurricane Irma are still coming in, and they look bad. Vegetable and Specialty Crop News posted a story this week about one strawberry farmer’s impacts on his fields from the ravaging wind, which tore out most of his plastic sheeting, and heavy rains, which eroded…