If you are to believe the weather models for global warming, then this weather is certain confimation that global warming is here. The weather pattern this year has been similar to the past two and fits the models perfectly for the northeast: cooler and damper.   All which has been great for he  lettuce and greens, but not so hot fot the strawberries, corn and vine crops.   We started picking  our first strawberries back June 7, and I bet we havent  had  two full days of sunshine since we started. We havent gotten all the rain that many of  my farmer friends in New England have experienced. As a matter of fact, despite the cloud cover, we were dry enough  so that we drip irrigated our peppers,tomatoes and vine crops last week. But in the last two days our moisture  issues have been  addressed with 2.5″ of rain and more in the forecast. Hmmmm….not so good with the fourth of July coming and the last  half of the strawberry season in full swing. The good news is that the outside crew are champs in getting the stuff  harvested for the stand and bulling through a full afternoon of catch up farming. They are working 12 hours a ady at least 4 days a week. The guys at the stand  and at the greenhouses (where we have a plant sale going on) are short handed as well, yet things still look pretty fresh and  kept up. A good crew, indeed…

Speaking again of global issues,we got notification and call from our extension crop specialists informing us that  the disease Late Blight of Tomatoes and Potatoes (the same one that caused the Irish  Potatoe Famine in the mid 1800’s) has shown up in New England  2 months early this year. The damp,  sunless, weather is perfect for spreading it and  it usually works its way northward  on weather systems from the south in a normal year. By the time it gets here in late  September  the growing season is well over, and harvest is already underway. But this year it seems many of the box stores in New England that carry garden  starters have been buying their tomatoes from southern growers, and the NH University Extension pathologist has, as of yesterday, identified  garden tomatoe plants in 4 different box retailers who had  plants covered with late blight that they were selling to home gardeners. Despite her request that they pull  pull them from the shelves, they would not. (She has no legal powers to make them)   By not doing so they are going to sell diseased plants out into the communities and help spread the disease around. As if the weather was not enough of a problem.  So the commercial growers, organic and conventional, can look towards a summer of spraying  their tomatoes and potatoes  more than ever, all while hoping the  weather  improves and the disease doesnt show up in their fields.  Farmers trying to figure out reprocussions of global warming and a global economy.