By Anne Basye La Conner Community News
My June column was going to be about soil and soil amendments — until it rained between June 5 and 8. “A substantial rain fell, not a meager one, and cooler temperatures helped the ground absorb it,” said Eddie Gordon of Gordon Skagit Farms, whose pumpkins, corn and squash were planted just in time to benefit. “Working in the ground is 100 percent better.”
“Things were looking pretty gloomy three weeks ago,” said Dean Swanson of Swanson Family Farms. “It was so dusty I couldn’t even see my neighbor’s tractor when he was working with a rototiller. We have plenty of moisture now. No one can complain.”
Swanson’s berries loved the shower, but he’d prefer sunny, 75-degree days until his berries are in. “An inch of rain on ripe raspberries or loganberries is a recipe for mold. Nobody wants to lose a crop to too much moisture,” he said.
John Thulen’s potatoes are also off to a good start. Unlike Swanson, he would like a couple gentle rains before July 4, and another one around July 20, “so we won’t have to irrigate so intensively, and maybe we can recoup our field costs.”
High-priced diesel doubled Pioneer Potatoes’ field costs for planting this year. “When you see the Cenex (Skagit Farmers Supply) truck delivering on-farm diesel, think of it as a Brink’s truck,” said Thulen. Diesel powers the irrigation guns and boom sprayers in the fields in August, “so while we don’t want to skimp on water, maybe we’ll do quicker pulls and manage water better.”
Forage crops like grass and corn are also thriving. “When we get rain, then warmth, and I put a little manure on top, things tend to grow,” said Jason Vander Kooy of Harmony Dairy. “You need all three: nutrients, temperature and moisture, plus of course good soil.”
“My soil was very dry and the rain was very welcome,” said Beth Hailey of Dona Flora, at Rudene and Best Roads. Her heavy clay soil will hold the water well around the roots of her many flower varieties.
But weeds are on the way. In farmer parlance, rain “increases the weed pressure.” Bigger farmers, or smaller farmers like Chris Dariotis of La Conner Gardens on Chilberg Road with equipment scaled to their acreage, can weed mechanically. Hailey, along with Jen Hart and Tim Scott of Hart’s Farm and Homestead on Best Road, weed their beds by hand.
As Ray deVries of Ralph’s Greenhouse once said to this reporter, “If it’s dry and needs water you add water. If you have water, you spend more time chasing weeds.”
As of Friday, June 12, the Skagit valley was still 0.37 inches below normal June rainfall, and about 25 percent under the normal year-to-date precipitation.
Will this summer be about watering, weeding or both? Stay tuned.
Anne Basye is a freelance writer based in greater La Conner.
