By Mary Hightower
U of A System Division of Agriculture

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’s strawberry growers may be reaching for the plant covers this weekend as an approaching cold front threatens to drop overnight temperatures into the 30s on Friday and Saturday in northern Arkansas.

The National Weather Service in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which provides forecasts for northwest Arkansas, was forecasting lows of 39 on Friday night and 35 on Saturday night. For central Arkansas, the National Weather Service at Little Rock was looking at lows dipping into the 40s on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

Strawberry season has been a mixed bag so far, said Amanda McWhirt, extension horticulture production specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

COVER UP! — Crop covers like those seen here can help protect horticulture crops such as strawberries, blackberries and blueberries during cold weather. (Division of Agriculture photo.)

“It started off looking really great — warming up really quickly early, and things started flowering very early,” she said. “It kind of made growers a little nervous because it was a lot earlier than normal — but that’s also exciting because you can start picking earlier and it helps on the economic side of things.”

In central Arkansas, some farms have been picking strawberries for three weeks, McWhirt said, adding “Normally we’d only be kicking things off.”

However, freezing temperatures returned in March.

“A lot of growers in the central and southern parts of the state were able to protect with row covers, but a lot of growers in the northwest corner, they had row covers on, but it just got so much cooler there that they actually lost a lot of the blooms that were open and even some of the small, green fruit,” she said.

McWhirt said that strawberries will keep blooming, so even though early fruit was lost, farmers were still able to get fruit later.

“The last couple of weeks have been perfect,” she said. “It’s been very dry, and the season has been going really well.”

However, “there is a little bit of concern about the cold temperatures moving in late this week, but hopefully, it will not dip down into the low 30s in northwest Arkansas,” McWhirt said.

Definitely been “ups and downs this season,” she said.

McWhirt estimates there are 200 to 300 acres of strawberries being grown in Arkansas.

To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.