The 2010 ASHS Annual Conference

Objective(s):
Radiation frosts and freezes can seriously damage unprotected strawberry buds and blossoms. Historically, overhead sprinkler irrigation has been the primary strategy to protect this crop from cold injury, but in more recent years there has been a shift away from sprinkler irrigation to floating row covers in North Carolina’s strawberry plasticulture production, as well as other strawberry growing areas in the Mid-South, Northeast and Midwest. Row covers have several important advantages over sprinkling, including important water savings, reduced soil erosion, reduced fertilizer leaching, and reduced fuel/energy usage. However, row cover application and removal is labor intensive and larger scale farmers in commercial growing areas such as Southwest Central Florida (>3645 ha), seriously question the technical and economic feasibility of utilizing row covers as an alternative to sprinkler irrigation for frost protection during their winter harvest season. There are added issues with row covers that relate to However, due to the severity of a freeze that occurred in Florida on January 11-14, 2010, strawberry producers were forced to pump more than 3.8 million liters/ha (407 thousand gallons of water per acre) to protect their crop from cold injury, and this led to massive sinkholes on Interstate-4 (Orlando-Tampa) as well as depleting neighborhood water supplies for over 400 residents in the Plant City area -- where most of the industry’s strawberry production is concentrated. Furthermore, sprinkler irrigation did not provide complete protection against crop cold injury on many farms in January 2010. There is relatively little local expertise in using row covers as an alternative mitigation method in Florida, and an important purpose of this workshop will be to discuss how row cover technology might be profitably adapted to strawberry enterprises in Florida as well as other production areas in the US and North American where sprinkler irrigation has been the predominant method of frost and freeze protection in strawberry.

Radiation frosts and freezes can seriously damage unprotected strawberry buds and blossoms.  Historically, overhead sprinkler irrigation has been the primary strategy to protect this crop from cold injury, but in more recent years there has been a shift away from sprinkler irrigation to floating row covers in North Carolina’s strawberry plasticulture production, as well as other strawberry growing areas in the Mid-South, Northeast and Midwest.  Row covers have several important advantages over sprinkling,  including important water savings, reduced soil erosion, reduced fertilizer leaching,  and reduced fuel/energy usage.  However, row cover application and removal is labor intensive, and larger scale farmers in commercial growing areas such as  Southwest Central Florida (>3645 ha),  it is still very unclear as to whether covers are economically feasible as an alternative to sprinkler irrigation for frost and freeze protection. There is relatively little local expertise in using row covers as an alternative mitigation method in Florida, and an important purpose of this workshop will be to discuss how row cover technology might be profitably adapted to strawberry enterprises in areas in the US and North American where sprinkler irrigation has been the predominant method of frost and freeze protection in strawberry.  Another purpose of this workshop will be to discuss the recent experiences of strawberry researchers in North Carolina for using floating row covers to advance the ripening season as well as to enhance branch crown development on the popular strawberry plasticulture cultivars Camarosa and Chandler. In addition, there will be information provided on various problems that have been encountered with row cover usage in the Mid-South such as mechanical injury to the plants and blooms under very high wind conditions and the reduced cold protection value of row covers that become wet and frozen.