Strawberry update

The farmstand has an assortment of early spring goodies such as scallions (onion and garlic) rhubarb, asparagus, lettuce and kale. Also there are still beets carrots and potatoes. Mendy has baked a nice selection of honey wheat and sourdough bread and the bulk food room has flour, oatmeal, spices etc. This summer the stand is open every day from Tuesday through Saturday. We are closed on Sunday and Monday. We had a freeze here this week. At 11 pm it was already down to 30 degrees however it warmed up a bit towards morning. The relive humidity was around 60 percent during the cold night hours ( very dry) and there was some wind. One can irrigate the strawberries to help keep the frost off as water releases some heat as it transitions from water to ice . This only works though if the relitive humidity is high (near 100% with dew forming) with low or no wind speed. Water can not evaporate if the humidity is at 100% so evaporative cooling is not an issue in a normal frost. In a dry freeze such as we had this week the evaporative cooling effect will drop the leaf and flower temps to a few degrees below ambiant if some zealous farmer goes out and makes them wet. Do not put water on in those conditions as it is harmful not helpful. Covers do very little in wind. I judged that the best thing to do was to go to bed and sleep and hope for the best as there was nothing I could do that would be meaningful The later kinds of strawberries were not blooming yet so there was no damage. The earlier kinds lost anywhere from 20-50% of there flowers so this will effect the crop but is not a disaster as the remaining flowers will take up some of the slack. What would have been the first picking is gone. This was harsh winter for small fruit as the temps were up and down a lot with the snow melting from time to time. We also had a lot of wind which blew the leaf mulch off of them in areas. This has resulted in some damage but is again not disaster. There is enough damage though to some of the new plantings that I am thinking to plant a extra acre of berries this spring ( in addition to the 1 1/2 acre that is normally planted to replace old beds.)and not to renovate all of what was planted last year. Late May is the peak of asparagus season. During moments of abundance we will sell unbunched field run asparagus at $2.75 per lb if you take at least 1/2 lug. Daniel