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All of Florida is under a freeze warning with temperatures expected to drop into the 20s Wednesday night and Thursday morning.� Gov. Charlie Crist signed an emergency order to relax weight restrictions on trucks to get harvests moved to processing centers.� The freeze has already hurt cold-weather crops like potatoes and cabbage in north Florida.� The concern is that low temperatures and high winds could cause trouble as far south as Lake Okeechobee.

�The dead winter is Florida�s primary, probably biggest, production season,” said Terry McElroy, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.� “We have lots of citrus.� We have lots of winter vegetables.� We have ferns.� We have strawberriess.� We have fish farms that are actually growing tropical fish in outdoor tanks.� So we have all kinds of crops that are potentially vulnerable tonight.�

To protect plants like strawberries and ferns, growers ice the plants, spraying them with water to insulate them at 32 degrees.