Rainy summers are good for fall crops
This rainy summer has
been problematic in some ways, but handy in others. For
example, the tiny persimmon trees I set out in our pastures last
fall have been thriving despite my usual summer neglect of
anything not in the vegetable garden. June bugs have been
leaving our blackberries alone for the first time ever. And
the seeds of fall crops are sprouting with no extra effort on our
part.
Actually, I dutifully
started a round of fall cabbages, broccoli, and brussels sprouts
on the porch, only to have a mouse come along and nibble off every
cotyledon. (That's what I get for storing cover crop seeds
in the open near my seed-starting area.) But then I realized
that the only reason I
started the fall crucifers in flats last summer is because it was too
hot and dry to sprout them in situ. So I poked a bunch of
little round seeds in the ground right where I wanted my crops to
grow and waited for the copious rain to make things sprout.
On the negative side,
we had an unexpected problem that was linked to the rain in a
roundabout way. I've read that you shouldn't water your
garden every day, because then the roots stay close to the surface
and your plants wilt if there's a drought. What I didn't
realize is that a sodden June and July had the same effect on our
crops, so when we actually spent a week at normally hot
temperatures with no rain, our watermelons nearly died. Good
thing I had one patch in a different spot where they were subirrigated
by the swamp resulting from roof runoff.
I hope your fall
crops are up and running like (most of) ours are. Autumn is
looming on the horizon and pretty soon, it'll be too late to plant
anything except leafy greens and winter cover crops.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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