2018 Season Wrap Up; Monsoon Edition

Nothing like waiting a year (almost to the day) to update what normally is a fairly active blog. Postings were nonexistent for a number of reasons; busy schedules, etc., etc., etc. But mainly due to the strange weather year and crappy growing season we had in 2018. With the light table upgrade it was supposed to be the best season ever; right? Being able to produce all sorts of seedlings under commercial grade plant lights. Unfortunately not!

The Washington County precipitation record still stands at 76.6 inches (1996) while 2018 went down at 67.1. We moved here in 2002 and there is water laying in fields and flowing across back roads, to this day, that I have never seen before. The ground was saturated by mid summer and now we have a slight snow pack. All liquid water now must find its way to the lowest point. Except for evaporation, there is no place else for it to go.

It took forever to get into the garden last spring to do the first till. The strawberry crop rotted in place, and the bug populations exploded. Trying to use organic spays would have meant having to apply them almost nightly. I finally had to resort to a commercial orchard spray to keep the cherry trees from total destruction. Even something as basic as succession planting for lettuce was DOA. The only consultation prize was a very good crop of summer squash. With just enough break in the monsoons I managed to get in six hills; three yellow and three green zucchini. We managed almost a full month of stir fry once they started to come in.

So if it ever dries out enough this spring to till, the strawberry bed will be moved to the long bed. The raspberry bed was due for renovation anyway so that will get some rest. And after fifteen years of constant cultivation, the majority of the Food Patch will be taking a well deserved year off in 2019 for rest and solarization. The raspberry and big beds in particular. The long bed will be used to "hopefully" re-establish a strawberry bed and for salad greens, maybe. For this round the strawberries will go into proper row fabric to control weeds.

Meanwhile, as an experiment I raised a flat of mini romaine lettuce on the light rack. The seeds went in the week of Dec 10 and are ready to harvest this week. I also have a couple of seed blends for microgreen production that I want to give a try as an addition to commercial salad mixes.