Mid Season

Another wacky few weeks of weather.  I finally planted beans and then a few days later we had lots of patchy frost on the ground at the farm.  I know this first hand as I camped out Sunday night with the kids and a friend with his kids.  It was literally freezing in my sleeping bag.  I've never been so cold that my legs hurt.  The kids were well bundled but I thought that my sleeping bag was more insulated and didn't bring back up.  So sometime in the middle of the night I needed to put jeans over my sweat pants just to stay warm.  My head was kept warm with a hat, hood, and my sleeping bag which I pulled over my head to keep from freezing.  It really made me think about what the homeless might do to keep warm.  We had a nice little fire and did the hot dogs, marshmallows, and we even had fresh eggs and cut up some oranges for breakfast.
This season has been tough for our cold season veggies.  It has been way to warm and "usually" we get a slower warm up and transition into our hot spring.  This year we have had a very warm transition but still too cool to plant warm season crops outside.  Especially like last week's freeze.  At least I wasn't ready to take the risk.  So there is sort of a production gap from the cool season crops to the warm season ones.  We should be fine harvest-wise but our cool season crops are stopping short this year.
The late frost a few weeks back has impacted all our stone fruits and loquats this year.  Some of our peach trees are still in hibernation mode and waiting for the right amount of chilling hours until they "wake up."  It was so warm that they never got their required amount of vernalization.These will hardly produce a crop.  The other trees that did break dormancy had their young blossoms freeze and fall off so we will get little to no fruit on them. I'm not exactly sure what happened with the loquat this year but it has very sparse fruit on it.  Maybe just too dry.
Our greenhouse trial with tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers looks good.  The tomatoes seem a little sparse and maybe a pollination issue or low light from the white plastic I used.  I'm not sure which or maybe both.  But I have been hand pollinating and it doesn't seem to affect the fruit set.  So I am leaning on light conditions which should get better with the longer day-length.
Jennifer is eagerly awaiting the carrots...Her favorite crop.  If I had to pick a favorite based on taste I would have to go with the peaches.  Looks like I will miss out this year.
I've got some pictures to show soon as I haven't posted some in a while.  Next blog will have them.