Rob's Rants

Rain on Grass. Courtesy Adrian Benko / Wikimedia Commons

I always intended this blog to have some gardening component. In fact, the third post I ever wrote was about an asparagus bed I had just planted.

But then last Summer happened. And last summer was an absolute disaster for New England gardeners (and farmers too).  So about a third of the way through the season I gave up, and didn’t write a thing about vegetables or anything else. And it was a good thing too, because at the end of the season, my harvest amounted to exactly two dozed snap peas, one stalk of basil, and about a dozen fingerling-sized Yukon Gold potatoes. What happened? Rain. A slow and steady summer of rain that simply kept everything soaked for several weeks straight. And the end result was a round of fungal diseases (including Late Blight) and an onslaught of slugs and other pests which killed and consumed everything in sight.

My carrots? The leaves were eaten by slugs. Cucumbers? Slugs. Lettuce? Slugs. Peppers? Slugs and a fungal disease. Basil? slugs. Tomatoes? Late Blight. Pumpkins? Late Blight and slugs. What a disaster.

According to my weather station, and the rain gauge which sits right in my garden beds, we received 35.05 inches of rain between May 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. The average temperature was only 62.8° F. And if you look at the rain graph from around June 15th through August 1, it rained almost every other day on average. In one stretch in June, I recorded eight straight days with measurable rain, followed by two dry days, followed by twelve more days with measurable rain. That’s twenty out of twenty-two days with measurable rain. It was terrible. (You can see the actual data from my weather station here: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMANORTH12&graphspan=custom&month=5&day=1&year=2009&monthend=9&dayend=30&yearend=2009.)

At the end of July 2009, the National Weather Service published a Public Information Statement about the unseasonably cool and wet Summer weather. Here is the summary for Worcester, MA:

WORCESTER REGIONAL AIRPORT MA OFFICIAL RECORDS SINCE 1892

AVG TEMPERATURE  DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009         61.9F           -2.8F    6TH COOLEST JUNE

JULY 2009         66.8F           -3.4F    4TH COOLEST JULY
 COOLEST JULY SINCE 2000.

JUNE/JULY 2009    64.4F           -3.1F    TIED COOLEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION WITH 1958.

PRECIPITATION    DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009       6.51 INCHES   +2.49 INCHES NOT WITHIN TOP TEN WETTEST

JULY 2009      10.81 INCHES   +6.62 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JULY…WETTEST
 SINCE RECORD 11.41 INCHES
 IN 1938. IT ALSO RANKS AS
 THE 10TH WETTEST MONTH OF
 ANY MONTH ON RECORD.

JUNE/JULY 2009 17.32 INCHES   +9.11 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION ON RECORD AND
 WETTEST SINCE THE RECORD
 OF 18.80 INCHES IN 1938.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS…
 - WORCESTER NO JUNE OR JULY MAXIMUMS 90 OR HIGHER – NONE SO FAR IN
 2009.
 - THE LAST TIME A 90 DEGREE OR HIGHER DAILY MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE DID
 NOT OCCUR IN EITHER JUNE OR JULY WAS BACK IN 2004..PRIOR TO THAT IN
 2003. NONE ALL YEAR IN 2004.
 - 40 DAILY AVERAGE TEMPERATURES BELOW NORMAL…16 DAILY AVERAGE
 TEMPERATURES ABOVE NORMAL…5 NORMAL IN JUNE AND JULY 2009.
 - 38 DAYS OF MEASURABLE PRECIPITATION 0.01 INCH OR MORE OCCURRED IN
 JUNE AND JULY 2009…DEPARTURE PLUS 17 DAYS. THIS BEATS THE RECORD
 FREQUENCY 34 DAYS IN JUNE AND JULY 1958.

Note the part about 38 days of measurable precipitation in June and July. And that pattern continued into August. That set up the perfect conditions for a fungal disease epidemic, and that came in the form of Late Blight. The Boston Globe wrote an article on the destruction of the state’s tomato crop and said,

Produce farmers in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England – already struggling with one of the wettest, coolest summers in recent history – are now battling late blight, a fungus with tiny spores spread by the wind that rots tomato and potato plants. It is the same disease that was responsible for the 19th-century Irish potato famine.

Needless to say, this year I’m hoping for a little sun.

I’m placing my order tonight with my favorite seed supplier, Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine. On the list this year:

• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Bell Peppers
• Basil
• Dill
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Brandywine (heirloom) Tomatoes
• Plum Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Green Beans

Hopefully it will be a drier year. It looks like my asparagus and strawberries survived from last year. I should get a decent crop of strawberries at least.

As is my New Year’s custom, I reset annual totals on my home weather station last night. And in case you’re interested, here were the local highs and lows for my backyard in 2009:

As always, you can see the data on the Weather Underground. The 2009 graphs are at http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMANORTH12&day=1&year=2009&month=1&graphspan=year. Also, my weather quality information can be found at http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/search?site=as792;Get%20information=Get%20information;tile=10;days=3#Data. My station reports to the National Weather Service via the CWOP/MADIS program. My station ID is AS792.