Summer rain affect on our produce

The summer of 2015 - a different one for sure. Midwesterners will remember this summer as one with lots of rain. Here in Northwest Indiana we got 21 inches of rain in 16 days. Crops sitting in standing water. Everywhere. At a critical part in the growing season also! Farmers have taken losses for sure.

Picking kale for CSAs after 4 inches of rain

As produce growers, we have gotten several questions asking "How has the rain affected your crops?"

At first, we really thought our produce field would be okay. It is in a sandier soil and wasn't sitting in standing water. A few dry days went by. The ground was still wet, but the vegetable plants still looked good. Then we got more rain, inches at a time, for several days. Even after the lengthy period of rain, it was too wet to get in to the fields to cultivate and take care of our plants. 

Getting a late start at planting due to the longer winter and so much rain really put a dent in our production. So much that we haven't attended our usual farmers markets this year. 

You take the challenges as they come. With the wet weather, we are thrilled that we have been able to still fulfill our weekly CSA deliveries, getting a nice assortment of produce, and still have enough for ourselves to enjoy each week and preserve for the winter. But just not a lot extra to have a good variety to take to the market.

The summer rain has also created an interesting harvesting schedule for our sweet corn. We planted 3 plantings of sweet corn, each two weeks apart. Due to the rainfall in June, our sweet corn will all be ready very soon.

Our biggest crop, pumpkins, had minimum wash out and are basically on schedule. We are looking forward to fall harvest. We will see closer to fall how things will look for our Fall Harvest Days.

Each year we don't know how the weather will be and we take each year as it comes. This year was just one of those years that created issues and we are working with what we have.