Peach, strawberry crops in grave danger after winter storm wallops Easter
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18024688/MSNBC
Updated: 1 hour, 23 minutes ago
The later-than-usual winter storm that smacked much of the eastern United States over the weekend is threatening to wipe out harvests of peaches, strawberries and other popular fruit crops, growers said Monday.
The storms that hit Easter week dropped impressive snowfalls in the Great Lakes region — Marquette, Mich., had gotten 49 inches of snow since Tuesday — and sent temperatures plummeting far below danger levels as far south as Texas and Georgia. And little help is on the horizon.
A new storm system making its way into the Pacific Northwest was expected to drop 3 to 5 more inches of snow Tuesday across the Upper Midwest, NBC WeatherPlus meteorologists forecast. Snow was also expected to continue in the Northeast, with 4 to 8 more inches in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and northeastern New York.
New freeze watches were in effect for Tuesday morning for parts of the mid-Mississippi Valley, the Ohio River Valley, the Tennessee Valley and the mid-Atlantic.
‘Really brown mush’
The biggest impact of the wintry weather was being felt by fruit growers in the South and the Midwest.
Peach growers in Missouri “had hundreds of trees damaged and broken apart,” said Jan Wooten of Sunshine Valley Farm in Rogersville. She said as much as 95 percent of the region’s crop could be lost.
Peaches usually don’t bloom until around April 10, Wooten told NBC affiliate KYTV of Springfield, but because of the freezing weather, “this year, we were in bloom in the middle of March, and that’s just never happened before.”
So when the freezing weather arrived, the blossoms were left unprotected. “I’m afraid we’re just going to see really brown mush,” Wooten said.In South Carolina, where temperatures dipped into the mid- to upper 20s for the third straight night Sunday, farmers said much of the state’s $35 million peach crop — the second-largest in the nation — was in grave danger, NBC affiliate WYFF-TV of Greenville reported.
Warmer-than-usual weather in late March meant many peach blossoms were already in the early stage of development there, as well, allowing the cold temperatures to literally nip them in bud.
At Gramling Farms in Gramling, S.C., owner Henry Gramling said his peach crop was “demolished, destroyed and a total loss.” Strawberries made it through the cold weather and he will start planting vegetables and other fresh produce soon, he said, but “every peach is destroyed.”
Likewise, Bruce Johnson, a peach farmer with BBB Properties in Inman, S.C., said his crop was a “total loss” — the worst in at least 40 years. Nothing can be done to save it, he said, and his only recourse is to absorb the loss and try again next year.
The cold weather will likely mean sharply higher fruit prices, said Bradley’s wife, Cathy, who added,
“This is the most severe temperature event we’ve had this close to harvest.”more......
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You all better start stocking up on fruits and start canning and freezing them!
Same for milk. It's price is also going up.
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