The stress of wind and joy of first basil harvest

Wind is always a main signal of the changing weather and the wind the last few days was very strong as the temperatures are going to be climbing into the 90s in the next few days.

On Monday the gusts were up to 45 miles an hour which is not fun to work in, especially since the field next to us had the walnuts pulled out so there is no wind break to slow down the wind.

When it is so windy we are not able to use our sprinklers to irrigate as the water does not go where we want to. We are able to use our drip tape on the crops that have it to help water them while they are stressed out.

The wind is not the only thing signaling the change in the season as starting today we are harvesting basil for the Wednesday Davis Farmers Market. The hours are from 4-8 pm starting this week with Picnic in the Park beginning.

Since planting the Genovese basil at the start of April it has been kept under row cover to keep it warmer and less stressed out. This year we planted more of the Genovese basil early in the season to have a good amount to harvest at the start.

We don’t have the tomatoes to go with the basil yet but there are lots of small fruits on the plants and they are filled with even more flowers. Potentially we are only a few weeks away from the first Sungolds.

In addition to the basil, we will have the first spring onions of the year at market starting today. These sweet onions are so delicious and great to add to any meal along with the green garlic which is now starting to create bulbs.

Many other summer veggies are growing well with the potatoes flowering which signifies they are not that far away from being ready to be harvest and even though we didn’t plant the summer squash very long ago it seems like they have doubled in size almost every day.

The wind is stressing out the plants so there is lots of irrigation to do to keep the plants going strong and the wind also ripped up some of the row cover that we have on the peppers, eggplants and basil.

We were planning to keep them covered for another week or two to help push them even further long but we won’t be replacing the row cover at this point. They enjoy this weather and having them covered since we planted them has helped them get a strong start already that this heat will exponentially help them grow.

Even with the days starting to reach 90 degrees, the spring crops are looking very good and growing well as long as they are watered. We’ve got lots of greens in the field and every week more lettuce is being ready to harvest.

Luckily as we finished harvesting the very late carrot planting the first of the spring planted carrots were ready to be harvested so we don’t have a gap in carrots at the market.

We are done with the citrus season, but may have some other fruit coming soon that is dependent on a few variable we are working through right now.