Tampa Bay strawberry growers were seeing damage to crops Monday morning after a weekend freeze.
“Welp, I see dead fruit, so that isn’t good,” said Carl Grooms, getting his first look at his plants at Fancy Farms.
Farmers are finding that many of the strawberry blooms have turned black, a sign of dying strawberry buds. Workers spent both nights out in the fields covering plants with ice to try and stave off 20-degree temperatures.
“You lose a little sleep, but what you lose a whole lot of is your crop,” Grooms said.
Farmers won’t know the full extent of the damage from the cold for at least a few days.
Grooms said he’s been around long enough to know the early signs.
“Yellow on the bloom — it’s good, that one will pick,” he said, comparing a yellow-centered bloom to a dark one. “That one won’t pick, it’ll just shrivel to nothing on the bush.”
“Based on what I’m seeing right now, there’s a lot of loss of fruit and small green berries,” he added.
Grooms said farmers will feel the loss of these blooms a little more in the coming weeks, as they find fewer berries out in the patch than they had anticipated.
“If that farmer isn’t able to recuperate and have berries later on to bring in money at a decent price to set off the financial loss, then he’s in serious financial trouble for this season,” he said.
The downside is that late strawberries don’t have as good a price, he said. Heading into another icy night, he said they’re hoping the freezes will be over soon so that new blooms can form for one last hefty harvest before the season is over.