In Their Own Sweet Time

We harvested our first broccoli of the season on Wednesday morning before the real heat settled in for the day.  There are many more broccoli heads that are approaching maturity out there as well.  We'll just have to see how they handle the weather conditions.  Because that's just the way it is sometimes.

When the farm was my primary job, the first big broccoli harvest was usually an indicator to me that the harvest season for our farm was really starting in earnest.  Sure, we would have pulled in significant amounts of produce prior to that broccoli harvest.  But there's a difference between off-peak and on-peak harvest on a diversified vegetable farm.  

Off-peak harvest is something you work for so you can have fresh food available for a longer part of the year.  On-peak harvest is when you have to work desperately hard to keep up with all of the things that need to be brought in NOW.  And, you have to find homes for it SOON.

Even now that we have scaled back, the broccoli still symbolizes on-peak harvest season.  Suddenly we are trying to keep up with the green beans, onions, melons, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash...  well, you get it.  Everything.

Things are very different now than they were when the farm was my full-time (and only) job.  For example, crop timing is important to us for completely different reasons now.  When we had a CSA, what mattered most was the timing of our crop with respect to each other.  If the broccoli was a little early or late due to weather conditions (or other matters) it mattered less as long as it still held the proper slot with respect to our crops.  If the weather was a bit cool and slowed the broccoli down, that was ok because most everything else would also slow - so the slots each crop held were pretty much intact.

In our current iteration of the Genuine Faux Farm, it matters much more to us that crops fall into slots that work with our job schedules and the relationship to sales opportunities or trips to the food bank.  But, no matter how hard you try to plan your planting dates and calculate your anticipated days to maturity, each crop is going to mature in their own sweet time.

It doesn't matter if you have a big project due this week for this job, or there are wall-to-wall meetings for that other job.  The broccoli decides when the broccoli is ready.

One of the bigger factors for vegetable production timelines is the "growing degree day."   A very basic way of looking at growing degree days that they are calculated by taking the average of a given days minimum and maximum temperatures and then we subtract a base temperature below which a given crop will grow (often 50 degrees Fahrenheit).  More growing degree days will typically accelerate the growth of most plants.  And yes, there are exceptions.  Many plants slow growth when temperatures get too high (usually over 86 degrees Fahrenheit).

As you can see, Iowa can be a pretty interesting place when it comes to temperature.  Just last week, we recorded a 47 degree low at our farm.  Then there was yesterday.  

Well, take a look.

A little before 3 PM on Wednesday, our weather station recorded a high of 100 degrees.  At that moment, the heat index was 122.  Around noon, we had our highest heat index (128 degrees) and our highest dew point (85).  For that matter, the heat index was already over 100 when I harvested the broccoli somewhere between 8 am and 9 am.

It's safe to say that very few of the plants at our farm found yesterday to be friendly for positive growth.  Yesterday was a "just survive day."  We'll see what happens after this.  Sometimes broccoli will start to bolt after a heat burst like this one.  We'll just have to see.

But they'll still do what they do in their own sweet time.