ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 11, 1997 TAG: 9704110059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON THE ROANOKE TIMES
Early-blooming Red Delicious apples took the hardest hit, said Jimmy Layman of Layman Brothers Orchards.
Fruit farmers in the region were out in their orchards Thursday surveying the damage left by the overnight hard freeze.
The general assessment: The cold did some damage but didn't wipe out this year's entire crops.
Apple orchards were hardest hit in low-lying areas, said Roanoke County Cooperative Extension Agent John Vest. The damage to the apple crop was extensive regionwide, Vest said.
He said he hopes to complete a report on the damage today.
Jimmy Layman, who farms the Layman Brothers Orchards in Botetourt County, said the Red Delicious variety of apple was damaged most by the cold because it blooms the earliest.
There isn't much fruit growers can do to protect their crops. Oil-burning smudge pots do little to protect the trees from a hard freeze. The use of fans or helicopters to create a breeze can help, but the costs are prohibitive, fruit growers said.
Layman Brothers workers carried hay bales out into the fields at 3 a.m. Thursday and set them on fire to try to offset the cold.
"But I don't think that did any good," Layman said.
He thinks he'll still have a crop of apples if Mother Nature cooperates. However, temperatures were again expected to hover around the hard-freeze level of 28 degrees overnight Thursday.
Overnight freezes can typically occur in this region until early May, Layman said.
Ross Byers, director of Virginia Tech's Alson H. Smith Jr. Fruit Research and Extension Center, said temperatures between 21 and 24 degrees can kill 90 percent of the apple crop at this stage of blooming.
Twenty-one-degree temperatures can kill budding peaches.
Temperatures ranged from 18 to 24 degrees in Frederick County.
``I'm sure we lost a whole lot of peaches, if not all, and probably some apples,'' said Diane Kearns of Fruit Hill Orchard, northwest of Winchester.
``Anything in full bloom is pretty much toast.''
Virginia has about 23,000 acres of apple trees and 2,300 acres of peach trees, nearly half of them in Frederick and Clarke counties.
Byers said it would be three to four days before the extent of the damage statewide is known, but it appeared there would still be a significant crop this season.
``We're wounded a little bit. We can't stand another freeze like this,'' he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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