By Clint Thompson
An excessive amount of rainfall throughout South Georgia in recent weeks will lead to some pecans falling prematurely.
Lenny Wells, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension pecan specialist, cautioned growers in the UGA Pecan Extension Blog that the recent rains have come during shell hardening. It will lead to “nuts hitting the ground over the next week or two as a result of water stage fruit split.”
“The other thing that getting all of this rain right here at shell hardening is a lot of varieties, when you have a big influx of rain or even real high humidity or run irrigation too much right at shell hardening, then that can cause a water split. You get this big influx of rain or soil moisture, and the trees suck all of that up at once. Those shells have hardened, so there’s no more expansion of that shell,” Wells explains. “The hydraulic pressure inside that nut builds up and you get a split, kind of like what you get with tomatoes or something after a rain.”
Wells said that certain varieties are impacted worse than others. These include Cape Fear, Schley, Sumner, Caddo and Oconee.
“Most of the time they’ll stay in the tree another week and then drop off. If we’re not already seeing it and I’ve had a few calls from it, but it’s coming, if people aren’t seeing it yet. Just be ready for that,” Wells said. “There’s nothing to be done about it, and when there’s a good crop load on the tree, it’s going to look like you’ve lost a lot more. You’ll think the whole crop is falling off. It’ll stop, but they will lose a percentage of them.”
According to the UGA Weather Network, Albany, Georgia, received 4.15 inches of rainfall and seven rainy days from Aug. 1 to Aug. 11. Cordele, Georgia, received 3.42 inches and nine rainy days during that same timeframe.