Growers Row

Every Spring is Different, AKA Making Excuses

So, first, a quick recap of the weather. So far this season, we have had quite a bit of unseasonably hot weather, some nice and warm weather most of the rest of the time, just a little bit of seasonably cool weather, a couple of rainy spells, and a few dry spells as well. We got down to 27 degrees on the morning of May 10 and we’ve had some inconveniently timed wind. Here is how that all played out in the fields, crop-by-crop:

The Brassicas

Broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards, bok choi, radishes, arugula…: they came through that one cold night in May with flying colors, under their customary layer of row cover, and generally, the warmth pushed them along so we have had most of those crops good and early. On the flip side, they don’t love it too hot, and so the arugula and other salad brassicas have been notably spicy. The heat also compressed some of our carefully timed successions of things like bok-choi, so there’s a bunch out there that bolted faster than we could harvest it. At least the bees are enjoying its flowers. I’ll end with just a little grumble about the wind blowing the row cover off so many times that the flea beetles got in and have been having a field day making their customary little round holes in everything.

The Nightshades

Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and peppers: We planted the potatoes fairly early and the warmth has pushed them along pretty fast. Mostly, they were still below ground that really cold night. The few plants poking up were singed by frost, but grew through it just fine. I have been worried about our usual biggest pest, the potato leaf hopper, and although they are out there, so far, they are not causing too much damage. Generally the approach we have taken is to push the potatoes along with steady irrigation in dry-spells to help them grow through as much of the leaf hopper damage as possible, and to maximize the crop before the inevitable early death at the hands of the little buggers.
This year, it looks like we will again be seeing the dreaded late blight on our potatoes and tomatoes sooner or later. There are confirmed cases in western PA, CT and LI. The probable source of the disease this year is from infected potatoes that over-wintered in the soil or were thrown onto a compost pile. Whether or when we see it again this year is partly up to luck and largely up to the weather. Hot, dry, sunny conditions really slow the spread of the disease. Cool, cloudy, damp conditions for any extended period of time would make it almost a certainty that we will have problems. We don’t have much appetite for the level of spraying (using organically approved materials) we maintained last year, and really haven’t made decisions about what we’ll do this year. Finally, another grumble about the wind, which blew row cover off the peppers and eggplant too late to bother re-covering them, but early enough that its absence has slowed the crops down a little.

The Cucurbits

Zucchini, cucumbers, melons and winter squash: They are mostly planted late enough to have missed the weirdest of our spring weather. We did have one bed each of summer squash and cucumbers out on that really cold night, but two layers of row cover did the trick and they came through beautifully. Usually, I am happier about how our first round of melons looks at this point than I am this year. Also, the second round of transplants got too overgrown so we skipped them in favor of the third round of transplants. We have planned in a couple of make-up beds for later in the season. Hopefully, we will end up with plenty of melons, but I don’t think we will realize my vision (well, from a harvest perspective it’s a nightmare) of ripe and juicy melons laying about everywhere.

Strawberries

The strawberries were saved from some, but not all, of the frost damage they would have suffered by the heroic efforts of intern Hannah and fellow Julia who strived valiantly late one Sunday evening to get the row cover (3 layers! More than ¼ acre!) back on the patch during the windstorm that immediately preceded that really cold night in May. You may have noticed that we went to twice as many narrow rows in the same amount of space that we had half as many wide row. I think the system still needs some work, but we’re trying it again for next year’s berries.

The Peas

Wendy told me that I definitely have some explaining to do. First of all, the plan was to have all of the shell peas together, all the snow peas together, and finally the two or three successions of snap peas also all together. That didn’t quite work out because of which beds were ready to plant earliest.
Then, since I know of at least one other grower who does this, I decided to mix in a little oat seed with the peas when I seeded them. Only it looks like I used too much oat seed (I really did only use just a little bit…I really don’t know what happened). The idea is that the oats provide a little bit of support for the climbing habit of the dwarf pea varieties we grow. I was also hoping that the peas would stay upright making it clearer exactly where the rows were planted when it came time to turn you all loose in the pea patch. At least that worked out. One other nice thing was the oats emerged earlier than the peas, so we could get in to do a gentle cultivation (weed control) good and early. All of that’s real nice, I just wish that there were more peas out there.

Everything Else

Everything else looks more or less normal. The early heat made some of the weeds grow super fast so several rounds of lettuce, spinach, beets and chard (well, and a bunch of other things too) got pretty weedy. We’ve been successfully cleaning some of them up by hand, and have finished with others, so, for the time being, things are looking a little better in control than before.
I encourage you all to come out to harvest some morning, even if you don’t have a working share. It’s your best bet at meeting our assistant farm manager, Sarah, and our interns, Irene, Angela and Hannah. They are all first-rate, friendly and deserve all our thanks for all their hard work!

Yours in the field,
Asher Burkhart-Spiegel