By Clint Thompson
Ideal weather conditions meant an early start to watermelon planting for Florida producers in the Suwanee Valley area. Hopefully, it will translate to early harvests that meet the Memorial Day window.
Bob Hochmuth, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Regional Specialized Extension agent in Live Oak, Florida, discusses the impact, which included some farmers concluding their plantings last week.
“The hot summer, late spring-like conditions that we had the last two weeks in February, if the transplants were ready from the greenhouse, growers have started. I’m going to say in general, the plantings are going to be earlier than you would have normally predicted if we were talking about this back in November or December,” Hochmuth said. “The warm weather and at least medium-range forecast appeared as though that would be a good decision. Sometime in the last two weeks of February, several growers began planting, and in some cases, they completed planting by the end of (last) week.
“It’s not unusual to have a few high-risk takers in the past, but I think the difference here is that the amount of acreage that has been planted early. It’s not that unusual to hear somebody getting started in February in a protected place along the river. But the expanse of numbers of growers that have gotten started, the amount of acreage this early is unusual.”
The early start will have a ripple effect and impact other production areas, including in South Florida where plants were impacted by the Jan. 30 freeze.
“What this will mean is, unless there’s some other weather event that becomes problematic over the next few weeks, without that happening we would be in a much better position to have watermelons for the Memorial Day weekend. The potential downside is we may not be done in the southern part of the state when these start to come on,” Hochmuth said. “There may not be as much of a smooth transition, but certainly the desire to get watermelons ahead of the Memorial Day market is very compelling.”
