Its 4 o’clock pm, September 24th, a day after the equinox and a day into fall…but its 96 degrees and the heat index is 101! Wow! Another day well over 90 degrees! We have passed the mark of 50 days above 90 degrees this year.
It’s been very hard to grow fall greens like lettuces and spinach in this weather. The soil temperatures have remained high, there has been no rain, and of course, this day’s weather is another day of how it’s been.
If it wasn’t for the irrigation well which brings up cooler water, I would be having an even much harder time of it. Right now I am running the sprinkler on the lettuces, which earlier this week reached the 2nd leaf stage. I am doing it just to cool down the baking soil. Later tonight, I will do my watering. If I watered it now, only about half of the water would get to the roots – the rest will have evaporated by the time it left the sprinkler nozzle and hit the ground. It’d be a waste of water and the energy to pump it, and wouldn’t do my garden much good.
Right now I don’t know if I’m just writing this to tell you a story, to get out my hot weather frustrations, or to come up with some point because I feel obligated to end this post with some flash of farming wisdom. I’m sure not going to lecture on global warming though. Don’t need to.
Think that I will just have to deal with the 96 degrees. That’s all I can do. Well anyhow, I need to walk out to the field and move the sprinkler over a few rows…get things cooled down. See if I can keep the lettuce going.
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