Dry weather challenging produce growers

Local farmers have had a rough season for produce this year, with swings in the weather messing with their crops.

“Spring was cold and wet, hard to get things planted. They were almost drowning from too much water. Then things just turned around,” said Ron Christensen, owner of Christensen Vegetable Farms in Alma.

Every year the weather varies, but Christensen explained that this year there’s been a significantly more dramatic shift in the conditions that normal.

West River Greenhouses operator Robert Parker would agree. Parker called the beginning of this season a backwards start, saying it led to a big rush for everyone to get plants in the ground in the last two weeks of June.

Parker may not have had to deal much with the messy spring, as they plant early in March so that things are ready for when people start their home gardens, but that didn’t mean they could avoid the effects of the spring.

“We grow ours (plants) to be ready at a certain date. The danger is if they get too tall and too overgrown. People weren’t planting at the normal time and we had to wait for the demand to catch up,” Parker said.

Some of that rain would certainly be welcomed now.

“Right now it’s dry, nothing’s growing I’ll tell you that. We need water desperately,” said Christensen. Some of their crops are already going bad and others will be soon to follow if something doesn’t change.

“It’s like your lawn,” said Parker. “Without water it just sits still.”

He said that anything that likes the heat, like corn and beans, is doing well, considering, but the crops that like the cooler weather aren’t growing if you couldn’t get them started early in the rainy weather.

Parker says this demand for local products is growing though and has been for the past 10 years. He explained that people are steering away from chemicals and opting instead to grow their own produce or at least buy from local farmers markets.

“People want to know what they’re eating. I think that’s a good trend that may not have been there 20 years ago when we accepted that food came from the grocery store.”