Early cold weather just peachy for some folks

The Christmas season has been a little merrier this year for peach growers across Middle Georgia.

They are coming off a disastrous crop, but next year is already looking more promising.

The loss this year, estimated at 85 percent, was largely due to an unusually warm winter, so early cold weather has growers feeling good.

"We are pretty excited about the cold weather so far this year," said Jeff Cook, county agent for Peach and Taylor counties. "We are cautiously optimistic."

Trees need a certain amount of hours below 45 degrees in the dormant stage to produce a full crop, and last year was woefully inadequate.

Although temperatures have warmed in the past few days, growers are happy to have seen a lot of cold days even before the first day of winter on Thursday. And the forecast is predicting more cold weather through the week of Christmas.

Ideally growers in Middle Georgia would like to have 1,000 chill hour total, which would be enough for all varieties grown here. About 850 hours would cover most varieties. Last year saw a record low of about 500 hours, depending on the monitoring station.

As of Thursday, a monitoring station at Fort Valley State University showed 374 chill hours this year compared to 236 on the same date last year. That's still about 60 hours behind the historic average for the same date, but it's the most since 2014.

Cook said at the current pace about 900 hours total would be expected, with the cutoff date being Feb. 15, although there is debate as to whether hours after that would also benefit.

At a minimum, he said, predictions are that growers should see 750 hours this year, and while that's not ideal, it would be enough for a decent crop.

Robert Dickey, owner of Dickey Farms in Crawford County, said he is happy about the early chill hours but noted that an unusually warm January was the real killer last year.

"We are back to a normal winter weather this year," he said. "We are on track. ... We just can't afford to have long periods of warm weather during the winter like we did last year."

Local growers haven't seen a full crop since 2012, with losses each year since from either low chill hours or a late freeze. This year was unprecedented in that there was loss from both. Cook said about 75 percent of the loss was due to low chill hours while about 10 percent was due to the late freeze. It was the worst crop since the infamous Easter freeze of 2007.

The peach crop has a bigger economic ripple effect than other crops in Middle Georgia because it is labor intensive and employs hundreds of workers, so the crop is followed with keen interest.

"I get a lot of people asking about it, they really do," Dickey said. "People have told me last year was not good for anybody."

This story was originally published December 21, 2017 at 12:26 PM with the headline "Early cold weather just peachy for some folks."