It rained today. And it rained yesterday. And it rained the day before yesterday. It’s been one soggy August. Cloudy, rainy and damp weather is good for transplanting seedlings. Today Skylar and I finished tucking in the first succession of cabbage and are nearly halfway through transplanting the fall garden. This weather is also good for germinating seeds. The beets, carrots, lettuce and arugula I seeded last week have all sprouted already!
Other than that the rain is more a hindrance than a help. I can’t seed anything else until it dries out. The wet weather is splitting the tomatoes even while they are green and rotting the watermelon in the field. The second planting of cantaloupe is somehow coming in pretty well, but the second round of watermelon is a bust. Good thing the first succession produced so well! That’s just how it goes. Some bumper crops, some failures. It’s always a mixed bag.
When the field dries out we will be hustling to get spring beds made. At a certain point in the fall, the rain starts to out pace the sunshine and the soil stays wet until spring. That means no tractor work. We are not ready for that to happen yet. We have to prepare the soil, fertilize, and shape forty beds for spring first. It’s the only way we can plant anything before mid-April. It’s the only way we can have produce before June. So we really, really need it to dry out!
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