LAKE COUNTY – While farmers around California are struggling with damaged crops due to extremely cold winter weather, Lake County's crops appear to have escaped any real harm.
That's due, in part, to the types of crops grown locally, such as winegrapes and pears, that handle extreme cold very well and, in some cases, benefit from it.
Local agriculture specialists say that it's still too early to tell how much damage might have been done to some crops.
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Hajik said this week that he hasn't heard any reports of serious crop damage.
“I would expect that maybe some nursery plants would be impacted,” he said.
The plantings of olive trees that have been increasing in the county might also have suffered, and those trees could lose growth to die-back.
Cattle, another strong local industry, could be affected by livestock water freezing and by grass killed off by the freeze.
“It's still very, very preliminary,” he cautioned.
Glenn McGourty, University of California Cooperative Extension's farm advisor for wine growing and plant science for Lake and Mendocino counties, agreed that it's still too early to tell how much damage winegrapes incurred, if any.
After bud break, he said, is when growers will know for sure what the freezing weather did to the grapes.
“My guess is there won't be much damage,” said McGourty.
“It's late enough in the winter and the vines are dormant enough that it's unlikely we'll get much damage out of it,” he added.
Where there may be an issue, he said, is with vineyard water systems.
“We can expect that we'll have broken valves and leaks,” he said. “That's pretty normal after these freeze events.”
Such plumbing problems can prove extremely expensive, he said.
Local vineyards are reporting that, so far, their pipes are doing OK.
Bonnie Sears of Snows Lake Vineyard in Lower Lake said they're not irrigating the grapes right now, which helped avert pipe damage.
On Wednesday morning, Sears said, it snowed in their area -- “just enough to make it pretty,” but not enough to cause any major concerns.
Sears said that, for winegrapes, the cold “actually is beneficial at this stage” of the grapes' growth.
Dick Frye, president and CEO of Langtry Farms, LLC in Middletown, said they saw some extremely cold nights during the height of the freeze.
“It was 15 degrees here a couple of nights, so that's cold enough to get everyone's attention,” he said.
However, like Snows Lake, Langtry isn't having any bad effects on its systems or grapes because of the freeze.
“We weren't in the middle of irrigating the vines themselves so those lines were drained for the winter,” he said.
Five homes on the property did suffer some problems with frozen pipes, and water lines to livestock broke in some cases, but the irrigation system so far is OK, said Frye.
Because the grapes are dormant now, he said he doesn't expect any damage.
Update on other crops
Rachel Elkins, Lake County's UCCE farm advisor, said that pears can withstand extreme cold, so there's no much concern about freeze damage to them.
She said Wednesday that the only thing concerning pear growers right now is a lack of rain, which is causing some of them to postpone putting dormant oil on the trees. That's to avoid raised toxicity levels that could occur by having the oil sit on dry buds.
Like Hajik, she expressed concern over the area's olive trees, which, like citrus, are perennials.
“Their little green leaves are out there,” she said, and subject to damage.
Temperatures of 15 degrees – close to recent projected lows – are considered a threshold for damage to wood, Elkins said, especially on olives.
Walnuts are susceptible to winter injury when the soil is dry, she said, and that's been the case recently with little or no rain.
“I wouldn't be surprised if there was some injury to walnuts,” she said. “It's not going to show up immediately.”
Damage would become noticeable in the spring, she said, when branches – or, in some cases, entire trees – may not leaf out.
“It's a wait and see situation,” she said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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