Summer
drought showing in fall season
Brooke Tacker, posted Nov. 1, 2006
Summer days - warm and sunny - with a cool mist blowing in
the wind over the recently planted crops and the temperatures
only reaching 99 degrees. Ninety-nine degrees and virtually
no rain. Maybe these are not the standard measurements of
perfect summer days.
Perfect summer days would be much more ideal for summer-growing
crops that are harvested in the fall. This past summer, however,
was not ideal. The weather and dry conditions affected the
pumpkin crops, fall leaf colors and soybean harvest.
How hot was it?
This past July, temperatures reached 99.9 degrees on the 20th
and the 31st in central Missouri, according to the weather
records on the Bradford Farms Web site. On Aug. 6, temperatures
rose to 100.2 degrees. Even on Oct. 2, the high was recorded
at 94 degrees; the hottest Oct. 2 in more than 100 years,
according to Columbia Missourian records. The record high
for October is only one degree away, at 95 degrees.
High temperatures were not the only problems in this past
summer’s weather. In central Missouri during the month
of July, there were zero days with more than one inch of rain,
according to the records on the Bradford Farms Web site. The
lack of rainfall continued through August when finally on
the 18th, 1.3 inches fell from the sky, breaking the trend
that had been running since June 10, the last day that there
had been more than one inch of rain. Two months of waiting
only gave summer crop producers false hope. After receiving
1.75 inches of rain on Aug. 26, central Missourians had to
go through the whole month of September with no days of more
than one inch of rainfall.
This combination of hot days and no rain gives a simple definition
of a drought.
A drought is 14 days in succession where there has not been
0.2 inches of rain on any one of the days, MU Horticulture
Professor David Trinklein said. A plant uses about 1.5 inches
of water a week, which is about 0.2 inches a day.
This is similar to the amount of water people are supposed
to drink each day. If people do not get the correct water
amount for 14 days or more in succession, then they will be
water-deficient.
This drought had severe effects on the fall season and the
products that were growing and developing over the summer.
Too hot
for heat-loving crops?
Pumpkins
are planted around late May and early June and harvested 100
to 120 days later in late September and early October, just
in time for the fall season. They are classified as “cucurbits,”
or heat-loving crops that thrive in temperatures in the 80s.
These
temperatures became problematic when the optimums of 70 to
95 degrees were surpassed in July and August.
“We
did not have as many [pumpkins] this year due to the drought,”
Jill McCoy, co-owner of McCoy Pumpkin Farm in Columbia. “The
early ones were deformed because of the lack of water during
the end of July when it was the worst.”
Trinklein
agreed. “It is a double whammy because of the heat and
the dry conditions,” he said.
The McCoy
Pumpkin Farm is made up of four to 4.5 acres of 54 varieties
of pumpkins, gourds and squash. While McCoy did not know numbers
of this year to compare with last year, she did say that her
and her husband tried irrigation for the first time on 1.5
acres of the farm.
“The
ones that we didn’t irrigate did fine and some that
were watered did not do as well as others that were not,”
McCoy said.
Trinklein
did not have the same opinion when it came to irrigation.
“Not
many people irrigate pumpkins because it is not cost-efficient,”
he said. “The No. 1 use of pumpkins is ornamental and
decoration.”
The reason
why water is important to pumpkin growth is because it is
indirectly how the plant makes its food. To make food, a plant
has to open a part of its leaves called the stomata, but the
stomata is surrounded by guard cells that first must be filled
with water before they allow the stomata to open. If there
is no water, the guard cells do not fill up, which means the
stomata do not open and the plant makes no food and, as a
result, does not grow.
These
problems, though serious to the crops themselves, have not
had a huge affect on the pumpkin market.
“There
are still pumpkins out there, but it’s the old supply
and demand concept, Econ 101,” Trinklein said. “When
supply is lower, cost will be higher. Demand is standard -
the same year after year.”
Fall colors
not so bright
“Early
October species usually turn brilliant red and purple, but
this season the colors were washed out because of the hot,
dry weather,” Steve Pallardy, a plant water relations
professor, said. “This was a severe drought, not a mild
one and it has just recently been broken.”
A sugar
maple is one tree whose leaves turn vibrant red early in the
season, but they were duller this year due to the impact of
hot and warm days early in October. The ideal temperature
to obtain these bright colors is in the 60s during the day
and 30s and 40s at night.
“There
are still many brown trees in the region to remind us of the
recent drought,” according to the Missouri Department
of Conservation Web site. “In fact, some trees are displaying
both brown and brilliant fall colors.”
Sugars
are the building blocks for red and purple colors in the fall.
A drought reduces the amount of sugars produced, therefore
resulting in fewer colors on the trees, Pallardy said.
A drought
also reduces the time that leaves are on a tree.
“The
leaves are falling earlier. They usually begin to fall towards
the end of October and through November, but a lot of leaves
are falling now, especially among maples,” Pallardy
said.
The Central
Western area of Missouri was most affected by the drought,
according to the regional drought monitor Web site.
Normally
the peak is expected to occur around Oct. 15 in the Central
Region, but there is still no peak as of Oct. 23, according
to the Department of Conservation Web site.
There
is still some color left. Oak is one example of a late-turner,
Pallardy said. The recent weather: cool, rainy and sunny has
been good for vibrant colors.
“Fall
color is back this week with the recent rains we have received,”
Missouri Department of Conservation Web site said.
Drought
causes more than lower yields
In addition
to dull trees, MU farmers are also seeing dull soybean bushels.
“We
harvested about 10 bushels [of soybeans] less this year than
last year,” Superintendent of Bradford Research Center
Tim Reinbott said. “The drought started later this year
and lasted longer.”
Soybeans
cover the most acreage at Bradford with 84 acres out of approximately
175. Early soybeans are planted so that wheat can be planted
after the soybeans are harvested. Planted in late June to
early July, these soybeans have an 80 to 120-day growing period,
much of what was covered by the zero rain days this summer.
“The
early soybean crop was not so good this year. The rain that
finally came in the middle of August was too late for these
soybeans, about a week too late,” Reinbott said.
August
is what makes your soybeans. It was tough with temperatures
in the upper 90s and dry conditions, he said.
Fifteen
to 18 inches of rain is needed per year for a good soybean
crop, Reinbott said. These numbers are far higher than the
three to four inches received this past summer.
Dry weather
weakens the plants and makes them susceptible to many diseases.
One disease found at Bradford this season was bud light, a
condition where the stalk of the soybean stays green and will
not fall down, leaving crops useless for harvest.
A lack
of water will also show element deficiencies, but “enough
water will mask what deficiencies are there,” Reinbott
said.
Irrigation
was used at Bradford to try and get water to these water-deficient
plants. Crops were irrigated every two weeks. Soybeans that
had been bred were especially irrigated.
“These
soybeans had genetic traits that we did not want to lose,”
Reinbott said.
Dry conditions
can affect insects’ behavior to a crop, too.
“Almost
any stress can make a vegetable crop more susceptible to insect
damage,” Assistant Professor of Horticulture Lewis Jett
said. “It seems as though insects ‘sense’
stress by a plant and usually attack (feed) on that plant
first. That is why I recommend to all vegetable producers
that irrigation is an essential input for growing vegetables
in Missouri.”
Crops
that came after the early soybeans during the full season
were much better, he said. “The later maturing, the
better the beans.”
