El Nino & Farming 2004
The following essay we put in our CSA members baskets after a good rain made bad strawberries. This Folks is Farming!
Questions, Answers & Musings of a So Cal organic grower in a wet February.
Where are the Strawberries this week? Any Chandlers today? Why did my Cauliflower have aphids this year and never before? What about "El Nino" and how does it effect the farm? When are the tomatoes going to be ready? Why don't you grow sweet corn anymore?
These are questions we have heard often or expect to hear soon.
All of these topics are related to one another in the world of our farm. Before there was this "el nino" guy we used to call the years wet ones, dry ones, mild ones or tough ones. In the wet years we would tend to forget about the dry years and bitch and moan about fruit lost to mold and weather damage. Conversely in the dry years we would worry about salt buildup in the soil profile, expensive costs of irrigation, frost dangers from low dewpoints and no market for our crops because everyone had a crop due to good weather!
As you probably have heard this is a predicted El nino year. An El nino is terminology for a scientific observation of anomalies in equatorial sea surface temperatures, prevailing wind directions and resulting differences between sea surface depths in the Eastern and Western Pacific Oceans. How long the anomaly is in place and how large the anomaly is theoretically dictate how strong the predicted effects will be. From the beginning of this El Niņo period scientists were predicting a mild to very mild El Niņo. The recorded anomalies were short lived and historically small. The media however, wanted this to be a big El Niņo. It is not.
How this El Niņo has affected the weather is different than other el ninos. That is really why I believe it is called weather. Because we in reality do not know weather or not it is going to be a wet, dry, hot, cold, windy or mild year. I read once in Flying magazine, that if short term weather forecasting fails miserably how can we expect long term forecasting to be any better? We can’t!
OK! What is my point? This El Niņo brought very warm fall and winter daytime and nighttime temperatures. We have had one night at 32 degrees this year, for only a couple of hours, and none below freezing. These warm conditions produced a bumper crop of early strawberries! We have never seen our strawberry fields look so good, especially here in San Juan Capistrano.
However, these same warm temperatures allowed the aphid population to multiply exponentially. The lady beetles we use to control aphids are ineffective in the winter months as lady beetles are winter hibernators and as the days shorten they migrate to the foothills looking for host plants to over winter on. In a normal winter, cold nighttime temperatures and an occasional freeze would keep the aphids in check. Not so this year! In 25 years of farming I have never seen an aphid population in January like I did this year. Hence aphids in the cauliflower. Good news though, the problem has corrected itself with the upcoming crops which grew out in cooler temperatures.
Last weeks rains are a blessing for the farm and the local flora and fauna. We desperately needed the rain and need more of it! However, the bumper early crop of early strawberries took it in the chin.
People often ask me why do our strawberries taste so much better than any other berries they have tried. First, we grow organically in alluvial soil full of minerals and life. Second, our climatic conditions of cool nights and mild days are perfectly suited to strawberry production. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we hand select only the ripest strawberries to harvest.
This involves leaving many berries which look ripe, but are not, on the vines. These berries are maybe 90% red but a day or two away from peak flavor. We leave these berries for the next pick. Real vine ripened flavor is our goal! But when it rains, especially a warm, big rain that arrives a day earlier than forecast, we get hammered. Ripe and nearly ripe fruit is soft! Adios fresas!
The end result: about 95% of the crop for February has been lost. And Chandlers, you ask? They, being the softest of fruit were especially hard hit and will be in short supply. The warm conditions and high humidity which followed and are still here are spreading the fungal fruit rot disease Botrytis. Commercial growers spray there fruit with chemicals every 5 days to inhibit the spread of this fungus. We remove the infected fruit and dispose of it away from our fields and wait for better weather conditions to come.
Prognosis: Strawberries will be in short supply until mid-March. Cauliflower will have far fewer bugs here on out. Spring beets and carrots are just about ready. Artichokes are starting to come in. And because of the warm weather I think our fruit tree crop, especially the apricots, is going to be short too. I just don’t think we received enough chill hours to set a crop.
So, folks, that is farming and the weather. As the farmer in residence I think I will be patient and grateful for what Nature gives and takes and hope it all evens out in the end!
Thank you each and every one of you for supporting our efforts at South Coast Farms! Your financial commitment and kind words are a joy to us! We hope the food we grow repays are debt to you!Update 2006. Look out! Here comes another el Niņo!!! What will we do? Well, plant early and lie to the moon. Used to work, I hope it still does. Check back.
For more information about El Nino visit: http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/
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