{"id":62124,"date":"2026-02-02T23:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=62124"},"modified":"2026-02-02T23:32:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:32:18","slug":"strawberry-crops-damaged-after-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/02\/02\/strawberry-crops-damaged-after-freeze\/","title":{"rendered":"Strawberry crops damaged after freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tampa Bay strawberry growers were seeing damage to crops Monday morning after a weekend freeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWelp, I see dead fruit, so that isn\u2019t good,\u201d said Carl Grooms, getting his first look at his plants at Fancy Farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou lose a little sleep, but what you lose a whole lot of is your crop,\u201d Grooms said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers won\u2019t know the full extent of the damage from the cold for at least a few days.
Grooms said he\u2019s been around long enough to know the early signs.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cYellow on the bloom \u2014 it\u2019s good, that one will pick,\u201d he said, comparing a yellow-centered bloom to a dark one. \u201cThat one won\u2019t pick, it\u2019ll just shrivel to nothing on the bush.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBased on what I\u2019m seeing right now, there\u2019s a lot of loss of fruit and small green berries,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf that farmer isn\u2019t able to recuperate and have berries later on to bring in money at a decent price to set off the financial loss, then he\u2019s in serious financial trouble for this season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The downside is that late strawberries don\u2019t have as good a price, he said. Heading into another icy night, he said they\u2019re hoping the freezes will be over soon so that new blooms can form for one last hefty harvest before the season is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tampa Bay strawberry growers were seeing damage to crops Monday morning after a weekend freeze. \u201cWelp, I see dead fruit, so that isn\u2019t good,\u201d said Carl Grooms, getting his first… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDJcL2ltYWdlcy53ZWJwP2ZpdD0zMTAlMkMxNjMmc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJTdHJhd2JlcnJ5IGNyb3BzIGRhbWFnZWQgYWZ0ZXIgZnJlZXplIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.7ZKm5rSkdqCcxOlDp8-n7lkFLRGQZywxWecx1raE4j8MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":62126,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/images.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[13475],"class_list":["post-62124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-strawberry-crops-damaged-after-freeze"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62127,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62124\/revisions\/62127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}