TRURO, N.S. – Unseasonal cold weather and this week’s heavy frost has some local farmers concerned about the future of their crops.
“You always see some frost but not a heavy, heavy, killing frost like we had, especially in June,” said Upper Onslow crop farmer Jim Lorraine.
“I took over the farm when I was 19 years old and that was 30 years ago. I started growing corn a year after I took over and I have never seen this.”
Lifelong berry farmer Curtis Millen of Great Village said he too cannot remember experiencing the type of frosty weather that has hit the province this late into spring.
“It’s been a long time since we had cold weather like that,” he said. “I’m guessing there’s quite a lot of damage around the province in other crops too.”
Millen farms close to 200 acres of strawberries each year and while the majority of those are protected by overhead irrigation or plant cover, he expects the frost will take out approximately five to 10 per cent of his anticipated harvest. And Millen predicted that loss number could reach as high as 15 or 20 per cent across the province.
But Millen expects he and other low-bush blueberry farmers will fare even worse with those crops.
“It took a lot of blueberries,” he said. “I don’t know what it got but it got a pretty good percentage.”
Lorraine said he is expecting his strawberries will survive the late season frosts because of the sprinkler system he uses to provide a coat of insulating ice.
“The berry crops are fine. We have sprinkler irrigation for them,” he said. “In doing that, that forms a layer of ice over the strawberry plant and the blossoms. And that helps protect them because there is heat given off, believe it or not, in ice formation.”
But Lorraine did express concern for his soybean and corn crops which are both at a susceptible stage to frost.
“We’ve never seen a killing frost like this in my career,” he said. “Our concerns are our sweet corn crop and our grain corn that we use for livestock feed. That’s the concern right now. We’re leaning towards being OK but we won’t really know for another two or three more days ‘till we can assess the growing points of the plant down under the soil,” he said.
The above-ground corn is at a two- or three-leaf stage right now. And while a lot of those leaves got burned off by the frost, if the growing point below the soil is still alive, it will regrow, he said.
“If it turns brown over the next two or three days then that means we’ve lost a couple hundred acres of crop. But since the weather is more like March then it is June right now, it may be a little bit longer before we can get a real assessment.”
Like Millen, Lorraine also expressed concern for other farmers across the province, including grape growers in the Valley whom he said have been hit hard by the frost.
Evidence of that type of damage was expressed by Jill Linquist, who operates a hobby vineyard along with husband Al Bégin in North River.
“Our vines were totally destroyed by the frost,” she said. “The buds are all black and shriveled.”
But Linquist said only time will tell if this year’s grape production is a complete loss.
“We will have to wait for a couple of weeks to see if the secondary buds are still okay. If the secondary are okay then we will have grapes. The tertiary bud just produces twigs and leaves and its only purpose is to keep the plant alive.”
Yet another area of concern was expressed by Mike Keddy, president of the Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia.
Although it is too early to tell the extent of the damage to the Christmas tree industry, Keddy said, he is anticipating losses of between 10 and 15 per cent.
