By Clint Thompson
Alabama’s drought-like conditions are the driest in the southeast part of the state. It’s created challenging conditions for vegetable growers who have started the planting process for this season’s crops.
Neil Kelly, Alabama regional Extension agent in Southeast Alabama, talked about the current drought.
“It’s dry. If you’re on hard, stiff dirt, no we haven’t gotten that dirt worked up yet. It’s just hard and breaking up in slabs,” Kelly said. “If you do that, you’ll have to deal with that all year long. Some fields we’re waiting on some rain. If it’s some of your sandier fields, they’ve started breaking that stuff up. They’re starting to get rows laid out and things like that; starting to lay a little bit of plastic in the fields that the weather will allow.
“The good thing about this time of year, if we can get some rain, it stays with us a little while. It gives us time to get some field work done whereas in the summer, you could get an inch of rain and three days later it’s dry again. If we got a good inch of rain this time of year, it would stay with us for a week or so.”
Drought Monitor
According to the most recent release of the U.S. Drought Monitor, extreme and severe drought conditions cover Southeast Alabama, expanding from Houston and Geneva counties; northward to Tallapoosa and Chambers counties; and westward to Monroe and Wilcox counties.
“It has been a dry winter for us, unusually dry winter for us. Luckily, right now we’re still on the front side of planting. We’ve still got time. Everybody’s got transplants started,” Kelly said.
“A lot of my guys, because they’re a little smaller than some of your wholesale growers out of Georgia, they start their own plants. They’ll maybe have a thousand of this or a thousand of that and they stagger their plantings. That’s what all of our guys are really doing right now.”