DADE CITY, Fla. — Farmers across the Tampa Bay area will be keeping an extra close eye on the temperatures and their crops Tuesday night into Wednesday morning as freezing temperatures put some at risk.
Farmers in Dade City are especially concerned about their kumquat trees ahead of this weekend’s Kumquat Festival in Pasco County. The good news, according to farmers, about 90 percent of the crop for this year’s festival was picked ahead of the potential freeze.
Even so, farmers worry fruit still on the trees to be harvested in February and March might be at risk, along with the trees themselves.
“I set an alarm for every couple hours,” said farmer Greg Gude who says he lost more than half of his kumquat trees two years ago when the temperature dropped faster and lower than expected.
“It makes me very on edge,” Gude said. “This was the exact same scenario we were setting up then. They were saying it might get to 28 degrees for a few hours, but then the temperature dropped.”
For that reason, Gude is double and triple-checking his irrigation system which failed in the past after the water lines froze. The water allows him to coat the base of the trees in a blanket of ice, which will create insulation from the colder air should temperatures drop into the 20s.
“The ice makes a lot of difference,” Gude said.
But there’s only so much humans can do against Mother Nature. If temperatures drop enough, the fruit still left on the trees could be lost.
“It will damage it enough to where it will dry and shrivel up and drop to the ground,” Gude said.
But the bigger concern he says is still the trees themselves which, when mature, can normally withstand slightly colder temperatures.
But after the freeze in 2018, the new trees are still very young. Those trees planted this year are wrapped in protective plastic, which could help save the farm from another disastrous winter.
“Definitely protecting the tree, because that tree is the most important thing in this business,” Gude said.
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