Tough Year - Growing 4 You

This year has been our toughest growing year on the farm. Low snow fall, warm winter created an environment for unwanted weeds and bugs to flourish. Many of which perish during our normal cold winters. Early spring - had our orchard in full bloom all of the trees, had a great "set" meaning that the blossoms had pollenated and were beginning to produce fruit. In April after the "sets" had formed, we experience 24 degrees one night - almost every set turned to jelly! We have 50+ fruit and nut trees on our property, only a few "sets" survived. Fruit trees only blossom once a year.

The next challenge came with a June rain and hailstorm that swept through the Treasure Valley. Bring loads of hail, piercing leaves, destroying blossoms on melons, cucumbers and tomatoes and denting what "sets" we did have on trees. Our farm was on the southern edge of the storm; we did have damage but many of our community north of us had utter devastation. Many of our field crops survived but we lost the first pick of our melons, beans, cucumbers. The plants have now rebloomed, and we are starting to harvest in those areas.

Late July and August have been hot before, but this year coupled with the smoke is just the sour icing on the cake. Many plants are struggling - UV has been blocked by smoke, their ability to regenerate has been tapped. When this happens, plants will go into abscission, they try to suck up all the water they can through their roots and sweat it out through their leaves thus cooling off the plant. The plant will form layer of cells that breaks the connection with its fruit and will then abort their blossoms to survive - hopefully they have enough energy to regrow more blossoms. Unfortunately, the harvest from this will result in smaller size product. This can happen in fruit trees, and they will not rebloom till the next year.

Though our Bulk Sales will be limited this season, Please visit the Local Fruit Stands, take a drive to Symms, Lakeview Fruit or Purdums. Many of those folks were not affected by the late frost, hail and rain. Remember SUPPORT LOCAL!

Thank you from all of us at Spyglass Gardens