A South Georgia citrus producer is upbeat after last weekend’s winter storm, which brought plunging temperatures and blistery wind conditions, threatened his grove. Jaime Patrick of Patrick Farms in Omega admitted it would still be a few days before he had a clearer view of the overall impact from the freeze. But he is optimistic.
“It’s going to take us a few days to see the final outcome. To us, it looks like we saved all of the trees and that they are going to be fine,” Patrick said. “We were trying to protect the tree and not really the limbs of it. We are going to have some leaf loss. From what we see right now, we didn’t have any splitting of the trunks. We think we’re going to be in good shape.
“Once we get all of this ice melted off here in the next couple of days, it’ll be a lot clearer story.”
Patrick produces approximately 250 acres of citrus, consisting of grapefruits, navels and tangerines. His oldest trees were planted in 2019, while his younger trees are around 2 years old.
He says the younger trees are easier to protect. Patrick used black plastic wraps to protect those trees from the wind and keep them warmer. For the larger trees, he used microjet irrigation for freeze protection.
Patrick believes this event was the second-most challenging freeze his trees have encountered, coming in behind the Christmas freeze in 2022.
“I’m pretty confident right now that we’ve done a good job and that we saved most everything,” reported Patrick. “We’ve learned a little bit every year. Seven years into it, we’ve actually been through freezing temperatures every year.”
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