By Clint Thompson
Prolonged periods of dry weather are not the worst thing for specialty crop growers. Most will say they prefer to apply their own water instead of having too much rainfall. It minimizes the disease pressure that producers have to manage.
But there is such a scenario where a little rain would be welcomed, says Ty Torrance, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension vegetable agent for Colquitt, Tift and Worth counties.
“We do prefer to control our own water just for disease pressure, but it’s good to have a good shower every now and then, just to completely wet everything up,” Torrance said. “It would help knock down some of the whiteflies that we’re seeing. We still have very high whitefly numbers right now.
“A rain shower is always better than irrigation as far as complete soaking. It just seems to always improve things over irrigation.”
According to the Sept. 18 release of the U.S. Drought Monitor, almost all of Alabama, Georgia and North Florida are experiencing either abnormally dry or moderately dry conditions.
This is also peak hurricane season. A tropical system would help replenish some lost soil moisture, but fruit and vegetable growers want to avoid the high wind speeds.
“We still wouldn’t want a really big hard rain. Again, just talking about younger transplants, you don’t want them to get beat up, but a good one-inch rain shower would help a lot,” Torrance said.