Spring Training is Officially Over

This evening, we are in the middle of a "storm".  Which is to say, there are sufficient drops of moisture falling from the sky to slightly dampen our garden.

We think of little teaser rains like this as rites of passage:  we'll be hitting 90° in the next week or so, which most of the country thinks of as summer weather.  Before actual summer, with weeks on end of 100°+ temperatures, Mother Nature likes to give us a mild little April shower to make us think we live somewhere inhabitable.

We are not fooled.  The easy days of delightful Spring weather are over.  Soon, the pond will be dry enough to dredge, and we will be calculating just exactly how long the vegetables can go between waterings with the hose.  We'd like to forgo the hose altogether, of course, because tap water has chlorine and fluorine and bromides galore in it, but we have not yet sufficiently collected rainwater enough to exclusively water with it.  Maybe by this fall... if we get a tropical storm or hurricane in July or August.  Thanks to ENSO neutral or even La Niña conditions coming soon to a Pacific Ocean near you, we're not likely to get any tropical moisture this summer.

No, for the next four to five months, the only truly happy plants on the place will be our cacti.  They aren't really a major crop for us, but no Texas garden would truly be complete without nopalitos.  That is particularly true when looking forward to a long, hot, dry spell.

We don't want you to get the wrong impression, however.  We have plenty of plants about the place which are doing quite nicely, thank you.  The corn is getting taller by the day, and there are blooms on our zucchini and cucumbers.  We are about 3-4 weeks away from blackberry harvest, and our tomatoes and peppers are thriving.  We aren't complaining about the impending drought months; we are merely chronicling.

In fact, as difficult as the summer months are going to be, they are vitally important to the kinds of production we intend to create around here.  Sure, the veggies (like our zucchini here) will have to be harvested long before the truly awful weather starts, but there are other things besides harvesting going on in the blistering days which begin around the middle of June and last until well into September.

Peppers, for example, have a very difficult time surviving the heat, but if and when they do, the torturous treatment causes them to produce truly remarkable fruit.  Not only are jalapeños grown under harsh conditions hotter than normal, they are also tastier.  You haven't had great salsa unless you have had salsa made with home grown peppers with that extra piquancy which only comes from near-dehydration.

Our grapes, too, must undergo harsh conditions.  We are not master vintners by any stretch of the imagination, but we do pay attention as much as possible.    If you want intense flavors, you have to have concentrated growing conditions.  We'll see just how well we balance those conditions as we gain more experience.

We suspect the same will prove true for our blackberry crops, as well.  The berries themselves are harvested in late May/early June, but we then have that blast-furnace summer to deal with, when the vines on which the following year's berries will grow are doing their thing.  They have to be kept hydrated enough to continue to thrive, and to grow strong enough not only to last through next winter, but also to produce another copious quantity of berries for next year.

And how sweet will those berries be?  It depends on a lot of factors, not the least of which is how hot the previous summer was.  As with everything else we are doing, it is a catch-22.  It'd be easier on us if we knew that the water we used were all from the pond, but... that's a project for a later date.

Maybe we can water everything with sweat this summer?  It's something to think about....

Happy farming!