Everything is producing and the days are full of picking lots of different fruits and veggies. We now have sweet corn, okra, tomatoes, cantaloupes and watermelons coming out of the field daily! I do enjoy eating some watermelon and cantaloupe, but my favorite, as avid readers might remember, is okra.

This is the first year that we have tried growing fresh herbs and, so far, I would say it’s been a success! The basil is growing more and more each day. It’s my favorite part of the field to walk through because it smells so heavenly. Added bonus of growing basil: bugs tend to stay away from the area. Next year I might have to grow basil around the entire field and won’t have to worry about pests at all! I can dream… If you would rather have basil all season, we do have small basil plants available at the store. Put them in a sunny window or out on your porch and they will provide you will smells and flavor all season long!

We have had a substantial amount of rain in the past couple weeks, as I’m sure you all know. Rain is an interesting thing for strawberry plants. Yes, they need water like every other plant, but too much water can make the berries rot or hurt their shelf life once picked. Plus, rain brings in lots of moisture and temperature differences which could breed disease.

Luckily, we are coming up on the end of the season, so disease is not a threat. By the time the disease has had time to progress, the strawberries will be done producing. There are still plenty out in the field and the weather looks like it’s starting to turn back to sunny and warm. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, now is the time! We should have them for another few weeks but then it will be time to move on to the other garden goodies.

The strawberry plants are still dormant, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still keeping us busy. About this time of the year we have to do what we call “cleaning the strawberries.” Over the winter, weeds like to start growing under the warm plastic that we lay down for the strawberries and they start to poke up out of the holes. The strawberries are dormant from the cold weather so right now they are still rather small. The weeds have no problem growing up and over the poor little strawberry plants. It’s our job to make sure that the strawberries can still have all the sunlight and space that they want. We have to go through the field and cut the weeds off of each individual strawberry plant! It’s a job that takes up a few weeks but luckily during the winter, we don’t have too many other crops to attend to.

Last week we learned about cold weather. This week we get to learn about how snow affects crops! Surprisingly, snow is a good thing (for strawberries at least) when the temperatures drop. Strawberries can be damaged when temperatures drop below 20 degrees. Snow is 32 degrees which, for dormant strawberry plants, is nothing to be worried about. They will be just fine at that temperature. When there is a blanket of snow overtop of them stuck at the 32 degree mark, the 14 degree overnight temperatures is nothing to worry about.