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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.