So far it has been a cold, wet start to the growing season. Way too wet! The Daily Camera says that Longmont has received 14.26″ of rain through June 20 as opposed to the average of 7.56″. And there was a day about two weeks ago when we got 2″ of rain at our farm on 63rd St!
The weather has caused some of our crops to be behind and it has also caused a few crop failures. One of the biggest problems with too much rain is that we can’t get into our fields when they are muddy. The tractors compact the soil when it is too wet. We also can’t use our seeders because the wet soil sticks to the seeders. And the seeds would rot anyway in wet soil.
Speaking of rotting due to wet and cold…our sugar snap pea seeds rotted this year. We planted them on time in March but the soil conditions weren’t right for the seeds to germinate so they rotted. I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve lost our sugar snap peas in the 20 seasons we’ve been farming. I know it is a huge disappointment as they are one of the highlights of the early spring crops!
Fava Beans
We always plant the fava bean seeds in February and you’ll start seeing these at CSA pickups this week. The plants were established enough to make it through by the time all the rain started to hit.
We plant a lot of our crops on plastic agricultural mulch and that is what has saved us. The mulch keeps the soil from turning into mud when it’s this wet. It also heats up the soil and helps protect against the cold weather. There are many other virtues of using mulch. We would not be able to grow the wide variety of crops that we have without using mulch!
One of the challenges with agricultural mulch is that you have to have the right soil moisture to be able to lay the mulch with the tractor. Fortunately we had a few days here and there when we were able to lay a lot of mulch. (Thanks for working so hard to make it happen, Javier!)
We had a few dry gaps during all that rain and were able to put in a lot of our spring transplants: kale, chard, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choi, celeriac, celery, leeks, and onions. We lost a lot of our onions due to very cold weather around April 15. We will still have some onions but the rest of these crops are a little bit behind but are looking pretty good.
We were also able to get our summer crops transplanted: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, zucchini, cucumbers, and melons. They’re a little bit behind but they’re all doing well and we should start seeing them before too long.
Tomatoes in Caterpillar Tunnels
A few years ago we decided to start growing the majority of our tomatoes in caterpillar tunnels. They really save us in challenging weather years like this one! Regardless of the weather, we get higher yields and nicer quality tomatoes out of the tunnels. And they protect against hail. We are able to do a good job of pruning the tomatoes and using the overhead supports to trellis the plants. Each year I tell our crew that if they do a good job trellising the tomatoes they’ll actually have a crop that they can harvest while standing up!
We currently have 6 caterpillar tunnels in the field–each about 100 feet long. I’d love to see us using more because they help many of the crops do better. Easy for me to say! I’m not the one who has to spend all the time and energy to build them each year! They are portable which has advantages in terms of crop rotation. So we move them to a new location each year and spend a lot of time putting them up and taking them down.
Caterpillar tunnels at sunset
We are really struggling with beets and carrots due to the rain and cold. It is especially hard to get carrot seeds to germinate even in the best weather. They have to be planted close to the soil surface, they need consistent soil moisture. and they take about 14 days to put out roots that keep them alive anchor them in to the soil. Wyatt has planted carrot seeds a few times already this year only to have a huge rain storms wash away all the seeds a few days later. We’ll keep trying!
One of the crazy things we’re doing is starting our winter squash seeds in our greenhouse. Wyatt would normally plant the seeds in the field around June 1 but we were still getting a ton of rain then. Planting the seeds in the greenhouse buys us a few weeks as we let the seeds get started in a protected environment. We’re hoping to start transplanting thousands of winter squash plants into our fields later this week.
Winter squash seedlings in the greenhouse
Every year on a farm has good and bad. Last year the spring was really hot and dry. This year we’ve been dealing with cold and wet. We have our failures every year, but so far we’ve always had lots of successes as well! Thanks for sticking with us on this crazy journey of farming on Colorado’s Front Range!
Amy
Red Wagon Farm 