VALDOSTA — Although many people are complaining about the unseasonably cold weather in South Georgia, Irvin Lawson of Lawson Peaches isn’t one of them.
Lawson said he welcomes the cold weather.
“We’re glad to see it,” he said.
Peaches require a certain number of “chill hours,” or hours in which the temperature falls below 45 degrees, Lawson said.
They have been getting 24 chill hours per day every day since Saturday, which puts his crop right where it needs to be.
In fact, he said he’s slightly ahead of schedule.
Lawson said his farm had accumulated 459 chill hours as of Tuesday, and he was expecting another 24 chill hours Wednesday if current temperatures continue. If he reaches 650 chill hours, 90 percent of his crop will be covered. He only grows a few varieties that require between 800 and 850 chill hours, he said.
While the current temperatures benefit his peaches, if this cold snap happened in February, when the young blooms were open instead of dormant as they are now, it would be catastrophic, Lawson said.
Ten years ago, most peach varieties grown in South Georgia needed 650 chill hours. Since then, Lawson and other peach growers have planted varieties that only need 450 chill hours, he said.
“The cold is good,” said Julia Coffee, bookkeeper for Burton Brooks Orchard.
It would be nice for the peaches if the weather stays cold, she added.
If it warms up, there’s a danger the peach trees will “wake up and start working,” which means a cold snap could damage the blooms.
It’s too early to predict what the peach crop will be like, Coffee said. They won’t know that until closer to Easter. The quantity and quality of peaches vary from year to year, she said, but it has been a while since conditions were favorable to produce a really good crop. They are hoping this will be such a year, she added.
Lowndes County Extension Agent Jake Price said most of the crops in South Georgia are already out of the ground — things like peanuts, cotton, peppers, etc. The only crops still in the field are things like collard greens and cabbage, and temperatures would have to dip into the low 20s to damage those, he said.
Early varieties of blueberries only have a few blooms out, Price said, so they’re not in much danger of being damaged at present. If there’s a cold snap another month or two down the road, they would probably need protecting, he said.
The same advice applies to homeowners with citrus trees, Price said. Temperatures that stay below 28 degrees for three or four hours could damage any citrus on the tree, so homeowners may want to “bank the soil” around the trees or put pine straw as far up the base of the tree as possible, he said.
Early blooming varieties of camellias have probably already sustained some damage as a result of cold temperatures, he added.
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