<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/capitalcityfarmersmarket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Mkt-10-18-18-600x400.jpg\")
http:\/\/capitalcityfarmersmarket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Mkt-10-18-18-600×400.jpg<\/p><\/div>\n
The biggest climate change problem Alan has experienced is \u201cgully washer storms,\u201d localized storms when 4 – 6 inches of rain falls in a short period of time. His soil is clay loam and is slow to drain. When that much rain falls in early summer on fresh tilled ground, a farmer can lose everything. There can be serious damage with sandy soil too, but it drains more rapidly. With clay loam there will be standing water, he can\u2019t get onto his fields with equipment for some time, and he has lost crops as a result. To manage these events, he has switched to using extensive raised beds. To create the raised beds, he uses a bog harrow that has two large harrow disks that toss dirt up to the side to form the beds. If the soil is loose, the harrowing alone works fine, but if it is clumpy, it will need to be raked after harrowing.<\/p>\n
If water runs off into the valleys on the sides of the beds and the ground is bare, this will create ravines, so he leaves the areas between the beds protected by weeds to hold the soil. To prevent the weeds from going to seed, he trims them with a weed wacker.<\/p>\n
He is also making extensive use of plastic to cover beds to protect them against rain. In years with successions of intense rainstorms, he has covered entire seedings with 10×500\u2019 tarps. This is especially helpful when seeding in June for a fall harvest. He has tried using hay mulch, but a big storm will push hay into the mud.<\/p>\n
Most of his fields are on a slight incline, and using raised beds has obviated the damage that occurs in intense storms. He has had to be more careful about the placement of beds so that there is less chance of getting a river running through a field. In general, he finds it is very important when planning a sloped field to terrace it to minimize the downward direction of water flow. It also helps to break a field into sections with strips of cover crops that will absorb and break the flow of water.<\/p>\n
He has also had to do a lot more plant staking, especially of fava beans. On Memorial Day weekend in 2013, he had 6 inches of rain, and if he hadn\u2019t had his fava beans staked and roped, rain would have knocked them down, they would have gotten caught in the mud, and he would have lost the whole crop. Corn can stand up again after a rain, but fava beans are a Mediterranean plant and aren\u2019t used to intense water events.<\/p>\n
Insects<\/strong><\/p>\n Alan is seeing more squash borers and squash bugs. Squash bugs inject a toxin that deforms plants. There can be enormous populations of them in late summer, and their little white progeny sometimes cover the ground. They damage cucumbers and zucchini. He never used to see them, and now they are a perennial problem.<\/p>\n He has also had tarnish plant bugs. These suck plant juices, attack the primary meristem of a plant, and destroy it. They also sting strawberry blossoms so that the fruit is deformed. They are especially active at temperatures in the 90s. Tarnish plant bugs are very difficult to treat. He uses an organic product called Entrust that costs $600\/lb., or people can use the same thing in Monterey Garden Insect Spray that is ready to spray on. Growers can use it only three times per season per crop because insects will build up resistance to it, but it does work.<\/p>\n Higher Temperatures<\/strong><\/p>\n Alan has not had too much trouble with heat as his soils are high in clay and slow to warm. He has noticed that in a very hot summer, it is hard to get lettuce to germinate. It won\u2019t germinate in soils over 75 degrees, goes into dormancy, and comes up next year. He has tried starting seeds in flats under lilac trees and keeping them watered to keep them cool. Spinach also doesn\u2019t like high temperatures, especially if it is late summer seeded and soil temperatures are too high.<\/p>\n Drought<\/strong><\/p>\n Alan has had only one year of drought. Many farmers are near rivers and irrigate their fields from the rivers, but he has a hill farm. In 2001, he had to truck in water to keep his plants alive. Others growing on well-drained land lost a lot. The spring for his house also went dry.<\/p>\n Benefits of Warming<\/strong><\/p>\n On the positive side, increasing temperatures over the last 30 years have made it possible to plant some crops he could never grow before. September is especially warmer. Sweet potatoes are now viable, especially if there is good soil, and he has had some spectacular sweet potato crops. He is also planting \u201cyard long\u201d beans, an Asian species that requires a long season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Catherine Lowther, PhD<\/em><\/p>\n Catherine is faculty in the Sustainability<\/a> program, and Chair of the Sustainability Committee at Goddard College <\/a>in Plainfield, VT.\u00a0\u00a0We will be collaborating with\u00a0her and her students\u00a0on\u00a0several blog posts during this project.\u00a0 Many thanks for their contributions!\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As southern areas of the region still need rain, northern areas have received more than enough over the past few weeks.\u00a0 Given these recent heavy\u00a0storms, we thought we would focus on measures farmers are using to adapt to such events, which are predicted to become more and more common with climate change.\u00a0 We welcome\u00a0Catherine Lowther,\u00a0faculty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2854,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-climate-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2854"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/farmclim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}