A relatively strong spring cold front moved slowly across The Times and Democrat Region Monday, leaving in its wake a threat of freezing temperatures Wednesday morning.

The forecast for frost is something regional strawberry and peach growers are taking seriously just two years after a freeze that virtually wiped out the state peach crop.

At the Cannon Bridge Road Carolina Red Strawberry Farm, owner Monty Rast said workers were busy Monday picking ripe strawberries in preparation for the freeze-protection spraying that will occur later this week.

The additional water would cause already ripe strawberries to rot, Rast said.

“I have frost protection and water sprinkling on them,” he said. “We cover them with water during the freezing period. The ice really coats the plant.”

Rast said when water turns to ice, energy is released which helps to raise the temperature about a half degree above freezing.

“The ice keeps the bloom from being burned. It serves as an insulation blanket,” he said.

If there is a hard freeze, however, it would be devastating, Rast said.

“We have heavy blooms,” he said. “It is a critical time for us.”

The Columbia National Weather Service is forecasting lows around 32 Wednesday morning.

Temperatures are expected to moderate later in the week.

Mark Malsick, S.C. Department of Natural Resources severe weather liaison, said temperatures Wednesday morning will be hovering at freezing or slightly below for about a two- to three-hour period before sunrise.

Temperatures Tuesday morning are expected to remain about 5 to 10 degrees above freezing as a result of windy conditions that will prevent atmospheric cooling.

Malsick said he expects this to be Old Man Winter’s last gasp until the fall.

“It is a quick and dirty cold snap,” Malsick said, adding that he is not expecting the freeze to be as devastating as the one that rocked strawberry and peach growers in 2007.

“That was scary cold,” he said.

The NWS did not issue any frost or freeze warnings through midday Monday, but warnings were expected to be issued before Wednesday.

Virginia Hinnant of Eutawville’s Hinnant Orchard is hoping and praying it won’t be a rerun of 2007, when her 30-acre peach orchid of 3,000 trees suffered a total loss during an April 9 freeze. Temperatures dropped to 27 degrees that morning.

Hinnant says she is planning to spray her strawberries, but with just three wells and only so much water, the orchard’s 2,000 peach trees could be in danger if temperatures drop below freezing for more than eight hours.

“We are hoping it won’t freeze,” she said. “Sometimes they are wrong.”

As for the peaches, Hinnant said most of the time the crop needs to be thinned anyway and temperatures just below freezing may be Mother Nature’s thinning mechanism.

But she says she is concerned about the blueberries, which have already bloomed.

“I imagine the cold will get some of them,” she said.

First-time berry farmer Walter Earley of Holly Hill Hickory Bluff Nursery and Berry Farm says he has had to delay the opening of his “you-pick” berry patch until this Thursday because of the frost potential.

“I am scared with this freeze coming,” Earley said. “We have overhead irrigation we will be putting on during the cold period.”

The farm has about an acre of strawberries and an acre of blueberries, with about 20,000 strawberries in the acre.

Earley said he is confident the irrigation spray will be able to adequately protect the strawberries through 28-degree temperatures.

But the newly bloomed berries are the ones he is concerned about. He estimates a low of 34 degrees could do some harm.

Earley says other plants and citrus trees will be taken indoors or covered.

In the meantime, Hinnant says there is only so much a person can do.

“If it does come, we hope the good Lord will spare us,” she said.

T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551.

You must be logged in to comment.