Farmers Market Voice

When asked hypothetically whether I would prefer a monsoon or a drought, without hesitation I always say I prefer the latter, but the last few weeks of dry weather have certainly made me reevaluate how I feel about my answer to that question. I’d still go with drought, but certainly weeks with no rain is hardly something to champion.

The tricky part about that question, though, when applied to our current situation, is that in my mind I imagine droughts happening later in the season when most of our plants are in the ground. By July and August, months when we typically get long dry spells, everything is well-established and well-mulched, which lends to plants weathering long periods with no rainfall. The problem with this dry spell is that it's hit us at an uncharacteristic time—a time when we’re busy transplanting all of our summer goodies like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, and cucumbers, as well as second or third plantings of our staples like lettuce and beets. Those little seedlings have to somehow make it through their establishment period in a pretty hostile environment. Sure, we put the sprinklers on everything, but the sprinkler doesn't shade them from the oppressive sun, which has been beating down on them every day.

Typically we transplant seedlings or direct seed just before a rain for two reasons—one being that they get a drink right away without us having to haul out the hoses, and the other is that during the cloudy weather associated with rainstorms, our little veggie babes get some reprieve from the sun while they’re first getting used to being out in the big, wild world. Without that kind of weather, some of our transplants, namely the peppers, have been struggling to take hold and haven't grown much since we planted them nearly three weeks ago.

There's also the business of watering everything. We’re not set up for major irrigation, as it's rare that we have to do large scale watering. We luckily have two sources of water at Hemmabast, so I can have two sprinklers going at once, but they’re at opposite ends of the farm; and every fifteen or twenty minutes I have to stop what I’m doing and go and move them to the next bed. It takes about a week of watering while working to soak the whole farm.

It's times like these that show how important mulching is. I always preach this, but mulch is amazing. I pre-mulch our tomato beds in the off-season with spent grain and grass clippings, and last night while transplanting tomatoes in a bed that was only half mulched, I went from digging down six inches and finding only dust in the bare earth to discovering that the soil beneath the mulch was still completely moist the whole way through. Amazing. This is why we never have to water our tomatoes in the droughts of midsummer.

The beds that have mulch on them with plants other than tomatoes—plants that require a bit more water to keep thriving—only need a good soaking once a week or even less. The bare beds dry up in just a couple of days and need at least three times as much water. Unfortunately, the source of our mulch is grass, so we haven't been able to continue mulching plants for the past two weeks. For you backyard gardeners out there, let this be a lesson: mulch as much as you can when you can, and you’ll end up spending less time watering (and weeding).

I was just joking to Steph that the best thing about a drought is no slugs. Seriously, though—they are an absolute menace during a normal spring. They sometimes make their way into our plant nursery and can eat a whole flat of baby lettuce overnight. In addition to no slugs there's also no blights or plant diseases, no rotting bottoms on our bibb lettuce, and no large scale crop failure due to flooding. When it's too wet, one also simply can't work (which can be viewed as an upside) because the ground is too mucky for planting or anything else. For those reasons I’ll still take a drought over a deluge, because when in a drought we can always put the sprinklers on and skate by.

Watering means much more work on top of the work we already have to do, so I’ve been pulling a few 15-hour days of late trying to squeeze everything in. We’re nearly caught up; but with the slower growth due to lack of rain, produce is sizing up much more slowly than usual so be patient with us while we await our next additions at market. In the meantime we still have some early spring goodies like strawberries, asparagus, spinach, and a nice mix of other goodies, including our famous lettuce. Please consider stopping over on Thursdays to help support your local farmers and makers; spring produce only comes but once a year. And to you backyard gardeners out there: I feel your pain, but consider that when in drought, at least there's no slugs.

Nick can be found selling fresh veggies every Thursday at the Huntingdon Farmers’ Market from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. May-October. More information can be found at www.huntingdonfarmersmarket.org.

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Overcast. Slight chance of a rain shower. High near 70F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Partly to mostly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 51F. Winds light and variable.

Updated: June 8, 2023 @ 11:56 am

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