[Watertown Daily Times – May 6, 2012]
Five consecutive nights of frost at the end of April may have jeopardized crops, though some north country growers say they’ve escaped the worst.
Starting April 26, temperatures dipped into the mid-20s at night. Exposed to the cold, fruit crops were among the most susceptible to damage, said Michael E. Hunter, field crops educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County.
“If any crops were impacted, it would have been fruits; grapes, strawberries and raspberries,” Mr. Hunter said. “But the frost didn’t impact (the north country) much.”
Damage reportedly is more severe in Western New York.
State Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie wants the federal government to declare disaster zones in the state. That would provide for federal low-interest loans and payments for damaged crops. Mrs. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, wrote to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday asking him to request a federal disaster zone declaration from U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
If the primary buds on grapevines are killed by frost, growers can lose up to 40 percent of their yield because they can use only secondary and tertiary buds, said Philip J. Randazzo, owner of Coyote Moon Vineyards in Clayton. Vines are most at risk when temperatures are 25 degrees or lower — which happened four out of the five nights in April.
Nevertheless, Mr. Randazzo said that his 16 acres of vineyards were protected because of precautions he took.
“We’ve had very little bud damage at this point, and it’s because we delayed our pruning by six weeks in anticipation of the spring frost,” he said. “By delaying our bud break we’ve been able to stay protected from the spring frost.”
Thousand Islands Winery owner Steven J. Conaway likewise said that he avoided the impact of the late frost.
“We used fans to limit the impact of the frost, because they create convection and bring the warmer air down,” Mr. Conaway said. “The temperature needs to get down to 23 degrees for us to have damage, and the lowest we had here was 26 degrees.”
Farmers who planted their corn crops earlier also might have been affected by the frost, Mr. Hunter said. If cold weather arrives 24 to 36 hours after corn is planted, water that seeps into the soil starts the germination process earlier than normal.
“It will cause the plant to corkscrew, and leaves start to grow under the ground,” Mr. Hunter said. “It will either delay the emergence of the plant or the kernels will fail to germinate.”
Farmers who planted early will have to wait to see if their crops survived the cold spell. But only about 5 percent of the county’s 30,000 acres of corn were planted before April 23, so most farmers avoided the risk.
“There could be spots on farms where this has occurred, but that will probably be the worst case,” Mr. Hunter said.
Eric Behling, an apple grower in Mexico, said his farm escaped relatively unscathed. He said he expects about 60 percent or 70 percent of his crop to yield fruit.
Western New York farms bore the brunt of the damage, Mr. Behling said, with some farms reporting 90 percent of their crops would be destroyed.
