Seasonal Uncertainty

The weather gets warm, we get excited and break out our shorts and t-shirts, and then winter decides to come back for round two. That makes loads of extra work for us on the farm. The strawberries get as excited for spring as we do. They start blooming and growing the second warmer weather hits. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to use a weather app…

Every few days now, we have to cover and uncover the strawberries. They need to be covered if there is any chance of frost, but also need to be uncovered if it will be warm and sunny enough for bees to be out working. Lately we have had frost every morning, and warm sunny days every afternoon. That means every afternoon we cover the strawberries before we go home, uncover them when we get to work, and then recover them when we go home again. It’s quite exhausting so whenever the weather would like to pick a season we would be quite appreciative.

Despite the weather’s erratic behavior, we have been moving forward with our springtime planting schedule! Some of the herbs that enjoy a little colder temperatures, like chives, arugula, and basil, have been planted. We also have some carrots, beets, and turnips planted to keep the potatoes company in the rows without any plastic mulch.

We also finally got all of our tomato and pepper seeds counted and shipped off to the greenhouse for planting. Tomatoes and peppers are like onions in the sense that they have a long growing season. To get late spring/early summer tomatoes, the seeds would have to be planted in February or March. In our climate, the cold weather would kill any little plants before they had a chance to grow a single tomato! So we grow them in a greenhouse until they get big enough to transplant and when the weather is consistently warmer. They should be ready to plant in mid/late April.

Last but not least, I finally got all of my okra seed for the year! It’s way too early to plant but it’s never too early to think about. This year we will have two different varieties to play with. Twice the varieties, twice the fun!