FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014\u00a0Unseasonably warm temperatures are accelerating crop growth across the Valley, prompting an early start to the strawberry season and raising concerns for some cool-weather vegetables.<\/p>\n
Growers say fields and orchards are already showing lush green colors, and flowers are emerging earlier than expected.<\/p>\n
UC Small Farm Advisor Michael Yang says this year\u2019s strawberry crop is running ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually, on April 10, you get the strawberry, but this week it\u2019s like three weeks ahead. And so yeah, it\u2019s weird,\u201d Yang said.<\/p>\n
Customers have been quick to take advantage of the early bounty at Kao\u2019s Strawberry Stand at Shaw and Grantland in Northwest Fresno.<\/p>\n
Owner Kao Saetern, who actually sells more vegetables than strawberries, says the sudden heat isn\u2019t ideal for his winter crops.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooks like 90 but right now plants look very healthy. We don\u2019t worry about it. We try to control the water a little bit,\u201d Saetern said.<\/p>\n
Yang says vegetables such as snap peas and several leafy greens could be impacted if temperatures continue to rise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are cool-weather crops. This is snap peas,\u201d Yang said, adding that vegetables like \u201cthe bok choy, gailon, uchoy. Some of those leafy vegetables. It needs the cool weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farmers have little choice but to adapt to shifting conditions and warmer temperatures can speed up plant development, for better or worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt grows faster, it flowers faster too. So it\u2019s good for the warm season crop but then the cool season, it just speeds up too quickly,\u201d Yang said.<\/p>\n
Saetern expects his winter vegetables to survive the current warm spell but acknowledges that the early heat could also bring an early end to some of his cool-weather crops.<\/p>\n
By ABC 30\u2019s Dale Yurong\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014\u00a0Unseasonably warm temperatures are accelerating crop growth across the Valley, prompting an early start to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-225078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}