|
||||
|
June 16, 2001
by Janelle Holden A late freeze surprised farmers and gardeners this week, leaving in its wake both green plants and black ones. On Wednesday night, a cold front rolled into Montezuma and Dolores counties from northern Canada and Alaska. Temperatures dropped into the 20s and low 30s in the wee hours of Thursday and Friday mornings. "This is a good week beyond our normal last freeze," said Cortez meteorologist Jim Andrus. Cortez recorded a low of 31 degrees on Thursday and a low of 36 on Friday morning. But area temperatures varied widely. Dove Creek recorded a low of 28 degrees, Dolores 30, and Hovenweep 27 on Thursday. Some of the farm temperatures reported were in the low 20s. A freeze settles on plants once the temperature drops to 32 degrees Fahrenheit; 28 degrees is considered a "hard freeze." The largest crop in the county, alfalfa, was mostly spared from the frost. The first cutting of hay was either already on the ground or in the process of being baled, according to Marti McCabe, a co-owner of Hey Hay Ladies. "A lot of people are still baling their first cut right now. Most people have hay on the ground. If it just froze and it was already cut, then it didn’t hurt it," McCabe said. Mark Stack, the manager of the Colorado State University extension office at Yellow Jacket, said the irrigated alfalfa looked fine, but the dryland alfalfa lacked the moisture to fare really well. Stack estimated that producers were seeing 2.5 tons per acre for irrigated alfalfa, and three-quarters of a ton to one ton for dry alfalfa. The alfalfa may have been spared, but some pinto beans felt the frost. Steve Chappell, a pinto-bean farmer at Goodman Point, said he will have to re-plant close to half of his 800-acre crop. "Frost is kind of funny in beans," explained Chappell. "It will take maybe one bean or two beans and then it will leave a bunch and it will freeze again. Out here we had places where it froze the whole crop in a west slope." Chappell bought seed to re-plant his crop on Friday. "Now it’s a real gamble whether they’ll mature enough to harvest in the fall," he said. But Chappell took the frost in stride. "Dryland, you farm by faith all the time, ’cause you have to keep a positive attitude or you just don’t make it." According to Dan Fernandez, the Dolores County extension agent, the Dove Creek bean farmers seemed to have avoided the worst of the frost. "We didn’t hear anything drastic, let’s put it that way, so far. Sometimes this damage takes a couple of days to show up," said Fernandez, who said the freeze was unusual. "Normally we say the absolute last day for a freeze, the absolute last day, is the 15th of June in Dove Creek, so this is really pushing the envelope." Chappell agreed. "I haven’t seen a frost this late in June. It was really unusual," he said. Silage corn and some of the specialty crops in the area were also damaged. John Sutcliffe, the owner of Sutcliffe Vineyards, said that his crop suffered a tiny bit of damage, but it just added to the damage his vineyards sustained from an early-May frost. "We didn’t actually have much on the fiber of the vines or the leaves, but we did have it on some of the young fruit clusters," said Sutcliffe. Guy Drew, another vineyard owner, said he saw some significant damage in his crop. "I got hit pretty hard in some places, and not much in others," said Drew. "Most of what got hit wasn’t producing yet." But on the bright side, the McElmo peaches were spared. "It didn’t hurt the peaches at all, they are already forming," said John Peters Campbell, a peach farmer in McElmo Canyon. "Our temperature just barely got down to 32. At this stage in the peaches’ development, the temperature would have to drop down below about 25 for a week or two before it really damaged them." However, for vegetable gardeners, much was lost that hadn’t been covered. "Next year I will certainly not mulch until after the 10th of June," commented Barbara Lynch, a vegetable gardener in McElmo Canyon. Of her 600 tomatoes, she estimated 100 to 150 were lost to the frost. "The ones that I lost were the ones that I mulched with hay around, or manure," said Lynch. "The mulch shades the ground and keeps the ground cool, which you want in the summer time, but in the case of a freeze, that tiny little difference in temperature around the plants meant it was colder there," Lynch explained. She also said the frost was fickle. "It was kind of funny — there would be one lost, and then the next one’s fine." Ann Chambers, who sells produce at the Cortez farmers’ market, said her covered vegetables lived through a 26-degree chill at Lewis. "We managed to survive," said Chambers, as did Stone Free Farms, an organic vegetable farm owned by Chuck and Rosie Carter. Owners of area gardening centers, however, told a different story. Local gardeners have flocked to the nurseries to replace tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables. "I’m selling them as fast as I can restock them," said Gail Vanik, co-owner of Four Seasons Greenhouse. Most of Vanik’s customers didn’t cover their tomatoes or peppers, but even some who did were hit hard. Vanik said that though stock was dwindling, Four Seasons still had a supply of vegetables for customers looking to re-plant. "Nipped" vegetables may still be viable, though. "On tomatoes, if the tops are black but the bottoms are still green, you can cut them back. There is a chance they will come back, but obviously it will take a long time and you are better off just starting with new plants. But they are salvageable, it just depends how hard the plant froze," said Vanik. Hot weather is expected to roll in once again this weekend. Ellen Heffernan, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Grand Junction, said that the forecast calls for sunny weather with highs in the 80s. "We really have warmer air that has moved over the area. The whole air mass is significantly warmer than it has been," said Heffernan. |
||||
|
Copyright © 2001 the Cortez Journal.
All rights reserved. |
