Today is projected to be the coldest morning this winter — with lows around 25 degrees in Leesburg — and area farmers are worried.

A hard-freeze warning that has been issued from the northern half of the state down south to Lake, Sumter, Volusia and Hernando counties that could damage fruit crops currently in bloom. Record record-low temperatures were expected to be broken in north Florida.

“We’re covering our strawberry plants with frost blankets and just hoping for the best,” said Maria Tracy of Heather Oaks Farm in Lady Lake, an organic U-pick farm filled with strawberries, blueberries, oranges, grapes, strawberries, mangos, avocados, olives, tomatoes.

“The crucial thing is protecting the plants,” she said.

On Monday, Tracy was laboring to cover more than 3,000 strawberry plants with a 500 foot-long roll of the thick protective covering that she bought for $300. It was the first time she has ever felt a need for the freeze blanket since she started the farm in 1989.

She was able to pick some tomatoes off plants to allow them to ripen before the projected hard freeze.

“The thing with strawberries is that you really can’t pick them (ahead). They won’t ripen, so I’m picking the ones that are ripe; and then the ones that do get frost, I’ll pick them off and hopefully the plants will come back.”

Lacy Wrobel, of Green Acres Blueberry and Peach Farm in Yalaha, was double-checking her warm-water irrigation system Monday to keep her blueberries, peaches and blackberries protected at the 35-year-old farm.

“With the wind and stuff, that adds a double whammy to do it,” Wrobel said. “We’ll just have to wait and see. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

Senior meteorologist Ken Clark of Accuweather said the farmers and others are doing the right thing in protecting the crops.

“It’s going to be a freeze and if you have tender vegetation, you need to take precaution to keep vegetation from freezing; 28 degrees is the magical number where there is starting to be some damage to fruit, but it is not going to stay below 28 too awfully long in most areas,” he said. “But, we do expect it to be a very chilly day.”

Clark projected today’s lows to be 25-26 in Leesburg, while it could be 24 degree in the northern part of Lake County and 27-28 degrees for the lows in the southern portion of the county. He expects the highs to be in the 40s.

“The panhandle is going to drop in the mid-teens,” the meteorologist said of the lows, which will be lower than the mid-20s in Anchorage, Alaska.

Of course the area’s cold snap pales in comparison to northern states, from the Plains to the Ohio Valley, which Clark noted is experiencing some of the coldest weather that hasn’t been seen since the last 10 to 20 years.

“It’s not going to be like that down here,” he saidThe meteorologist noted last month’s coldest day in Lake County was 42 degrees, and the coldest day in November was 36 degrees.

He said today’s lows in the mid-20s is cold for this area.

“It didn’t get this cold last year, so we haven’t had this kind of cold for a while,” Clark said.

In Pierson in northwest Volusia County, an area that bills itself as the fern capital of the world, growers were preparing to use their overhead irrigation systems as protection against the cold. They planned Monday night to spray their plants to create a protective ice layer once the temperature reached freezing and then run a constant flow of 72-degree water over the iced plants.

Source - http://www.dailycommercial.com/