PLANT CITY – Despite temperatures at or below freezing for some eight hours overnight, strawberry grower Justin Grooms expressed relief his fields appear unscathed.
“Everything went exactly as we rehearsed,” Grooms said Thursday morning from his 105-acre strawberry field off County Line Road. “I’m pretty confident. We were on top of it, and there should be no (fruit) damage.”
Grooms, the manager of his family business, Fancy Farms Inc., and other strawberry growers protect their crop by running the irrigation system, creating an icy blanket over the berries. Water forming ice releases heat, which protects the strawberries.
Workers started the irrigation pumps shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday as the temperature approached 32 degrees, he said, and they ran continuously until about 9 a.m.
The temperature at the field dipped as low as 26 degrees about 4 a.m., Grooms reported, and it stayed near the freezing point for about eight hours.
One bit of good fortune: The National Weather Service had forecast winds of about 10 mph, which normally would have an even coating of ice over the strawberries. That would have exposed some fruit to the cold air, causing enough damage to eliminate them from harvesting and sale.
But the winds stayed down early Thursday, Grooms said.
“The (irrigation) equipment worked, and we got a nice coverage,” he said.
This story will be updated
Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980.