MUSELLA, Ga. — Peaches are one of Georgia's main crops. We enjoy them in the summer, but the spring is a critical time for the trees and the delicate blooms.
Here's why an abundance of rain has some growers concerned.
Downtown Musella is quiet these days.
The packing shed is parked in its tracks and all the work happens in the field.
Lee Dickey is the fifth generation running Dickey Farms.
"I was talking to my dad and he said, 'You know, I just don't ever remember it being this wet early in the year like this,'" he recalled.
It's normal procedure for a peach farm plant saplings in January.
"We just planted one field this past weekend, and normally, we would have done that a month ago," Lee said.
Rain has put them behind schedule -- in fact, they still have another 5,000 trees they'd like to get in the ground this spring, but the bigger concern is standing water in the field, lapping at the trunks of the peach trees.
"They just get the common term is wet feet," Lee explained. " I'm sure there will be some tree loss as a result, but it's way too early to know."
The rain has also put them a bit behind on pruning, and there's another danger.
The precipitation has made it hard to spray fungicides on the crops.
"One disease is called blossom blight -- that bloom harbors disease from moisture and humidity," Lee said.
Dickey says all of these factors are something to keep an eye on, but he says if we can dry out some, this summer you'll be biting into your favorite Georgia peaches.
"They're ready to bloom, they're waiting on some warm days, they can't wait to jump out," he said with a smile.
On a positive note, Dickey says he believes his crop got the proper amount of chill hours this year.
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