Tropical fruit nursery prepares for damaging cold temperatures

In Bokeelia, the team at FruitScapes is taking precautions to protect their tropical fruit plants from the cold temperatures expected in the coming days.

While citrus fruits have some natural resistance to freezing, tropical plants like mangos are at risk of dying if temperatures drop too low.

The FruitScapes team has been busy insulating their greenhouse with sheets of plastic and placing blankets around plants to protect them from the cold. They're also using a polymer spray to shield the leaves from drying out and becoming fragile in the wind.

If temperatures drop overnight, the team will turn on sprinklers to try to prevent freezing and use propane heaters to combat the cold.

Stephen Cucura, co-owner of FruitScapes, said the location of the nursery was chosen because of Pine Island's tropical environment. Charlotte Harbor creates a natural protection against cold when warm air blows off the water.

"We are on the center of the island," said Cucura. "The north end, we'll probably see seven or eight degree warmer temperatures than we do because as the wind moves south on the island, it's passing over land and it's cooling down even more."

Cucura called the unpredictability of the weather forecast disturbing as the potential for a week of cold temperatures reminds him of an event 15 years ago.

" The coldest we've ever seen here on this site was 26 degrees 15 years ago, and that lasted for about eight hours. We had severe damage on almost all of our trees," Cucura said. "This cold is nothing light to look at, it's something to worry about."

Cucura called FruitScapes 'lucky' so far this year. The lowest temperature this year on the nursery has been 44 degrees. This is now the third major cold front to attack the plants and each has been colder than the last.

"If it's a light frost and it destroys the mango crop that I have right now, I'm not too concerned about that because mangoes have a tendency to reflow in March and April," said Cucura, planning for freezing temperatures. "What I'm concerned about is a hard freeze. If we get a hard freeze, it burns back the tree quite a bit. It doesn't have the energy to flower again this year."

Cucura explained that a hard freeze could set back their mango production by one to two years, especially after the damage caused by hurricanes over the past three years.

" Hurricanes, drought, cold," said Cucura. "It's always something that mother nature throws at you and you have to be prepared for it and just try to work through it when it happens."