Week 7, 2015-16 Season

We have had some good rain and upper 40's for lows this past week.  In fact we even put on the fireplace for most of Sunday afternoon and evening for our enjoyment.  Here is the cooler, wetter weather I've been expecting since they announced that this would be an El Nino year.  Especially since this is predicted to be a greater than normal El Nino event.  In fact, the climatologists say this might grow to an even bigger event than the 1997-98 El Nino.  I remember the weather for this year as I was growing cabbage in Gainesville for a Master's thesis and I got something like 14 inches of rain during my project in a week.  The cabbages loved every bit of it and grew to the size of basketballs.  I will be planting lots of cabbage this winter as a hedge to see if we can replicate things.  If you'd like to see more about El Nino and what that mans for our locale, in a very nice web format, you can check out my work blog at http://hortagent.blogspot.com/2016/01/el-nino-summarized.html   We planted more collards, kale, lettuce and red potatoes this week to the field.  The cool season plants seem to be perking up with this cooler weather swing.  The greenhouse tomatoes seem to have been dropping flowers instead of putting on fruit for this week.  However we still have much fruit on the vine already in the green stage.

This last week I got a bit of a startle when harvesting sweet potatoes.  It was cool and raining as I was harvesting early in the morning.  I had already dug about a quarter of what I needed for the day.  I generally remove the plastic mulch and reach around in the soil to feel the potatoes then dig them out.  When I get to the edge of the plastic I generally peel back the layer a bit and then poke around underneath for any potatoes until I get to the point where I need to peel back more  plastic to reveal fresh ground to search.  I then gradually make my way down the row like this until I have all I need.  This last Saturday I was poking around underneath the mulch to my left and my hands were underneath the plastic mulch where I could not see them.  Not feeling any potatoes I lifted back the plastic and there staring at me in a tight coil was a corn snake just a few inches from where I was poking around for potatoes. Needless to say, my harvesting protocol quickly changed in light of the new data and now I pull all plastic back and harvest in front of the plastic line.  No more blind reaches looking for potatoes.  After I regained my composure, I quietly shooed him to the row middle and out of the way of my harvesting process so we both could get back to work; me with the harvesting and him with keeping the rodent population down on the farm. You think that a cup of coffee wakes you up in the morning?  You should try being surprised by a snake.

      Waking up the neighbors while harvesting.  I've got the stick next to his head as he pokes out from underneath the plastic to see what the racket is all about.