The past few weeks have felt rough. There have been literal highs and lows in the form of our weather. We haven’t had significant rain, we are already in a drought for the year, and a perfect storm of weather happened within a week that has devastated farmers across our region.
We reached 92 degrees, in April. Then, a week later, we measured 22 degrees here on our farm. That freeze most likely put an end to any fruit for the year (blueberries, apples, cherries, peaches), turned the tender green leaves that had emerged on trees black, killed any seedlings that had already been planted out in the garden, and turned the many tree blossoms brown. The hot temperatures from the prior week quickly pushed out all new growth and blossoms and the freeze put an end to them. In general, temps below 28 are a death knell for fruit trees and some perennial flowers. While I suspect that many of the trees, even the new ones, will be able to push out new leaves, nothing will bloom again and we will most likely have to wait until next year for a significant fruit harvest.
The morning of the freeze, some of the peonies looked very droopy (as above). This is because when we hit freezing temperatures the stems lose their turgor. A freeze cause the cell structure inside a stem to collapse because of ice crystals forming. Typically, as the day warms up the plant regains strength and the stems right themselves. For the most part, this was true though a few of the Itoh peonies have not recovered ( as a side note, the Baptista hasn’t either).
In general, I’m loath to ever call ourselves farmers. Literally, there are generations before us that hold an incredible amount of knowledge that we couldn’t ever begin to know. There is so, so much to learn and even though I often feel like I know a lot about peonies, one doesn’t know what they don’t know. Case in point- while reading about how farmers in our area have reported total crop losses from the freeze, I came upon another peony grower who stated they simply didn’t know if the peonies would be able to bloom this year. They even had smudge pots going all night amongst their rows to try to mitigate the cold temperatures. Ya’ll, I didn’t even know I should have been worried about my peonies! Peonies are very cold hardy plants, they are tough and reliable, yet this peony farm has experienced loss from freezing temperatures so they were very worried. Now, I too, have added that worry to my growing list of worries!
Something I didn’t expect when we moved to the farm was just how up close and personal I would see climate change. Never before have I been so aware of the changes in our weather, the highs, the lows, the destruction of storms. I truly believe anyone who doesn’t believe in climate change is simply willfully ignorant. Rolling back environmental protections, dipping out of the Paris Agreement, deregulating environmental standards and opening protected places so that big business can continue to make money is, to me, the epitome of selfishness, gross moral standards and a total lack of care for the people, animals and plants that share our planet. It infuriates me that this is the legacy we are leaving our children to deal with.
I hope that this isn’t all too much of a downer but I do think it’s important to discuss the lows as well as the highs. I’ll be back soon to talk about a few of the highs we’ve had recently, including a garden tour and a birthday celebration!
