The cold went away but then we got the gales of May-vember, which I think is how the lyric goes. Cold and wind are causing issues, and I’d say that it’s been a challenging springtime, but when is it not? The part of farming you both cannot control or anticipate is the weather.
Cold might mean staying away from planting certain things, but wind causes problems for me mostly in regards to irrigation. Sending water droplets into the air with gusting 60km/h winds means you’re just wasting water, which means another delay for transplanting. On the other hand, installing row covers to protect crops from the cold is impossible, and the row covers that are down need constant monitoring to make sure they’re still locked down.
The potatoes are all in as of today. This is about 2 weeks later than we usually are finished. There was no point to planting them early in such cold conditions. We’ve also changed our fertilizing program for the potatoes so it will be interesting to see what data we get back throughout the season.
The peas we got in early are still not germinating. Now after the cold start and the wind, we also don’t have rain, and we are dry farming our peas, so they’ll just have to wait. It’ll be a late crop of peas this season.
On the good news front, the carrots, russian parsnips, spinach and early radishes have all germinated. It took the carrots and parsnips three weeks, but they’re up and going.
Our early transplants green onions, beets and kale are going and so are the hakurei turnips, but they’ve got some flea beetles attacking them and a row cover that is flapping around in the wind (I’m watching it right now) that isn’t doing much to protect it against said flea beetles. Last year I planted hakurei three times after two failed starts, and this year I vowed to make it one and done, but I just can’t seem to get this crop going without at least one aborted attempt.
Our starter greenhouse is completely full, backed up and overflowing.
We started hardening off our broccoli, brussels sprouts, lettuce and onions to make room. However on a night where the weather channel said it would be 1C overnight, it was actually -4C overnight. There was some minor damage, mostly to the sprouts which were the last to come out of the greenhouse and therefore the least hardy. A great and early reminder that the weather channel is not to be trusted under any circumstances, and is at best, a ballpark guide. The difference between a 1C and -4C for many crops is fatal. I’d make a comment warning about handing our whole society off to “AI” and laying off all the experts to save money, but you already know what I’m going to say about it.
Our hoophouse is looking really nice. The tomatoes are in need of their first trim and training up their support lines, whenever we actually have some time to get to it, and our beefsteaks are setting out their first fruit. The cucumbers have a slow start, they’re not great transplants, but I thought why are we transplanting cucumbers in the hoophouse anyway? I can just plant the seeds strait in the ground, which is what I’ll try next season. The peppers are a bit stunted, but I’ve given them a bit of molasses and rainwater to see if that doesn’t perk them up. I had trouble with peppers in the hoophouse last season as well so not sure what I’m missing about protected culture peppers.
Lastly, I was transplanting late summer broccoli in the greenhouse the other day when I noticed something tiny moving. When I finally realized what it was I ran for my macro lens.
So here’s my tiny transplanting buddy, Mr or Mrs Jumping Spider. For scale, the big white fuzzy thing is a tiny piece of perlite from the soil mix.
Not sure what species this is – I’ll throw it up on iNaturalist later – but the jumping spider world is numerous and diverse. This little guy is only a couple millimeters in size at most. Luckily for me jumping spiders spend some time just sitting around (probably plotting their next move) so it was a fairly good photography subject, and no wonder that these spiders are a favourite of macro photographers the world over.
Back to the wind.
Graham
thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice
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