Berry crops are more than a source of additional income for Moore County farmers. Straw-berries and other berries add color and personality to the agricultural scene.
Wanda Ring and her husband, Lewis, have been concerned about the severely cold weather causing damage to berry plants. Their farm is north of Whisper-ing Pines.
But so far, no damage has been observed.
Eric Honeycutt, horticulture agent with the Moore County Cooperative Extension Service, visited a couple of strawberry farms last week and did not notice any damage.
“I don’t think we’re done with winter yet,” he warned.
Strawberry plants are dormant at this time of year and won’t be “putting out much tender new growth” until its warms up in late February and March, Honeycutt said.
“We really won’t know much till it warms up enough to show growth,” Wanda Ring told The Pilot. “It has been rough.”
Billy Carter, an Eagle Springs farmer, thinks the strawberry crop is safe for the time being, provided there is not a period of very warm weather followed by extreme cold temperatures.
He was concerned about this weekend. After several weeks when high temperatures in the 40s felt like a heat wave, the weather prognosticators were predicting temperatures in the 60s by Sunday, perhaps as high as 70 in some places.
“I’m really worried about it warming up,” Carter said. Hopefully, it won’t stay warm very long.”
Carter said the severe weather in December and January should not have caused damage. Problems would have developed if December had been a warm month, followed by cold weather in January.
Apparently such broad chang-es in weather confuse plants.
“But this winter, it has been cold from the beginning, not these spikes we have some years,” Carter said. “If we had had really warm temperatures in December, it would have been devastating.”
State horticulture specialists have issued advisories recommending that growers protect strawberry plants with the use of row covers, a sheet of plastic that drapes the entire length of the plant bed, Honeycutt said.
Carter is among the few growers who have taken this advice.
Although his observations at strawberry farms were generally positive, Honeycutt did have a bit of bad news — Amy and Vince Denny will not be raising strawberries this year.
If there are no weather problems, Moore County will have local strawberries on four other farms: the Pilson farm near Cameron, Richard Presley at the former Bryant Berry Patch east of Carthage, as well as the Lewis Ring and Billy Carter farms.
For the most part, the recent cold weather has been good for farms, according to Extension Director Bert Coffer.
The recent snow actually protected strawberry plants by providing a natural insulation from the cold.
Coffer said the extremely cold temperatures are both good and bad.
The bad effect may come in the higher cost of heating poultry houses, an expense that will cut into poultry growers’ profits.
One poultry grower said it cost more than $4,000 to heat four chicken houses just for the first two weeks of the chicks’ lives.
In addition, fuel costs climbed by 15 cents a gallon during that period.
On the other hand, cold weather kills some insects and the additional rain and snow is beneficial to soil.
“In a year’s time the soil receives 50 pounds of nitrogen,” Coffer said of the sleet and snow.
Coffer said that peaches and berries need a certain amount of time to be dormant before new growth appears, and cold weather provides that setting.
As with the farmers, Coffer and Honeycutt were hoping that the weekend warming trend would be too brief to rouse fruit buds from a dormancy that could end with a killing freeze in the crucial spring months.
