LEE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Stephen Cucura, co-owner of Fruitscapes, is facing a relentless cold snap that is threatening his specialty: mangoes.<\/p>\n
“It is hurricane, drought, cold. There’s always something that Mother Nature throws at you,” said Cucura.<\/p>\n
This time, it’s the cold weather causing concern.<\/p>\n
“It’s been disturbing a little bit, because it’s been one success of cold after another,” said Cucura.<\/p>\n
He fears the nighttime temperature will dip to 29 degrees, nearing the coldest temperature of 26 degrees experienced 15 years ago.<\/p>\n
Cucura’s mangoes, a tropical fruit, have zero tolerance for freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n
“Mangoes do not have that antifreeze built in. They get 32 degrees, and they die,” said Cucura.<\/p>\n
“That’s all it takes, just a couple hours, sometimes just an hour or two,” he added.<\/p>\n
To combat the cold, Cucura is taking preventative measures.<\/p>\n
“We’re prepping. We’re getting all our blankets ready to cover our plants with putting up plastic on our greenhouse, spraying polymers on our plants to keep them from desiccating,” said Cucura.<\/p>\n
Frost blankets are ready, and propane heaters are on standby.<\/p>\n
“It’s basically a blast furnace. It just blows, billows out, hot air. You put that in the middle of your greenhouse,” said Cucura.<\/p>\n
He explained that it “pretty much radiates enough heat to keep that entire greenhouse a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature.”<\/p>\n
As the cold lingers, Cucura hopes for one simple thing.<\/p>\n
“That the forecast goes back up above 40 degrees,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Above 40 degrees for me, I’m comfortable, but once it drops down into the 30s, there’s too much room for error,” added Cucura.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Stephen Cucura, co-owner of Fruitscapes, is facing a relentless cold snap that is threatening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,356],"class_list":{"0":"post-137403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news","11":"tag-lee-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}