Paper Bag Tomato Season

Been keeping a watchful eye with wishful thinking on night and day temps that are directly related to the success of the summer veggie offerings. At the farm we have several micro-climates that when combined with soil and air temperatures hold the destiny to how abundant the main season is supposed to be. The well planned out "days to maturity" for any veggie can be disregarded just by what Mother Nature gives us for growing weather. In a more predictable growing season we would be overflowing with full size ripe summer squash, peppers, tomatoes etc. by now. All the labor put in to crop planning, seed starting, soil amending, tilling, planting, weeding and fertilizing is ultimately up to our growing climate as to weather or not the plants perform to their ideal harvest dates. Did you know that pollinating bees don't even like to come out when it is cool? Of course it would be so less labor intensive to just insert the plant into the soil, water, wait and pick-bypassing all the other steps it takes to get the final destination.... growing in the dream world is not reality especially this year! I know I am not the CSA Farmer frustrated by this phenomena and there are many customers out there csa subscribers, farmers market customers and backyard gardeners who are just as frustrated about why "x" isn't ready on time if at all. This has been a very challenging season indeed. This is the first year of my now 4th growing season that there has not been an abundance of anything to do trade outs in. All the crops we over planted that were ready for example onions and french carrots had to be distributed to shareholders for lack of planned crops. These could have stayed in the ground to obtain a larger size but then the shares would be smaller than they had been and we have to be resourceful with what we do have. Wishing we had more control over the situation is an understatement! But at least for our CSA customers we can assure you we have not sourced out veggies from other farms to give the illusion that everything is just fine. Everything our shareholders have been getting has come directly from our farm.
When the flowering on the warm season crops seem to just sit there I kept planting more lettuce and the like hoping to jinx the weather a bit. To no avail the lettuce kept coming up ready to pick while the things like tomatoes took their sweet time in making real fruit. Four plantings and harvesting of lettuces later, we finally have been able to harvest the tomatoes at the green glossy stage. As a result our share holders have been receiving bags of green tomatoes with an apple or two in them to speed up the ripening process.
I pulled the following article up this morning I hope you find it useful.

Weather Eye: Cool summer brings back old memories

By Pat Timm

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Pat Timm

Ah, the first day of fall was actually rather nice, a few lingering showers, some blue skies and sunshine, highs still in the low 70s. Yes, September for us weather and climate folks is always the beginning of a new season as the rest of you await the official change on the calendar later this month.

But for the record books, we have stored away the statistics for the meteorological summer, June, July and August. And that will show that it was indeed a very cool season; however, we did manage 12 90-degree days. To me, it was ideal, except for the gray and damp days of June. And some of you with gardens have harvested red tomatoes while many are still waiting except for those tasty cherry tomatoes. It may be a struggle to get a large harvest this year, as I don’t have really good news in the extended outlook, either.

1993 was a cool summer, and looking back at some of my columns on this date in 1993, I began my column with this quote, “Summer until further notice” were the words spoken the other night by KPTV’s David Apple.” I added, “Good news albeit two months late.” The entire summer was a bummer with nearly 2 inches of rain in July and temperatures below average.

In my June 22, 1993, column I said this, “CLOUDS, CLOUDS, CLOUDS! The first day of summer officially began at 2 a.m. Monday and just shortly after, around 2:20 a.m., the clouds rolled in and drizzle began by 6 a.m. What a way to start the summer season.” I went on to say in that column, “ But what could you expect? After all, we had just completed five dry, mostly sunny days with pleasant temperatures. That incidentally, was perhaps our longest dry spell all spring.”

And it didn’t get any better than that the rest of the summer. Yes, there were many green tomatoes that year. And so it goes. See you next on a perhaps rainy Sunday.

Pat Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at http://weathersystems.com.