Seed Growing in a Weird Climate

I get asked all of the time what its like to “grow seeds”, and lately, what it is like to grow seeds with all of the weird weather we have been getting.

The short answer is, increasingly difficult. It seems like every year we get some kind of record breaking weather event. Just in the last 18 months we have had a heat dome, and then a record breaking flood event last November. We followed with a long, wet, cold winter/spring that didn’t warm up until early July. And most recently, the warmest, driest October on record.

I know these weather events are hard on all farmers, whether he/she is a grape grower for wine, a Farmer’s Market vegetable grower (which we also do), or a cattle farmer.

Remember when the heat dome hit us in June 2021? In the course of one day it went from the low twenty’s to the high thirty’s, and over four days got to 40 degrees celsius! I had about two acres of seed crops and vegetables for the market growing and it was very interesting to see what was affected and what soldiered through.

Without exception, all of our “temperate” crops suffered and some failed to give a harvest at all. For example, I had a large planting of beets being grown out for seed, and the sun literally cooked the seeds black on the plants. I wish I had a picture to show but I don’t. Some of the seeds still looked good, so it became a real chore to separate the “cooked” seeds out from the good seeds.

Our onions mostly failed to make large bulbs. They remained permanently shocked by the weather, as did our potatoes. We had a poor harvest of little spuds last year. If we had an unlimited supply of water we would have been able to cool the vegetables through the event, but here on the Gulf Islands water (lack of it) is constantly an issue from late Spring to late Fall. All of the lettuces, both for seed and for market just… quit. We planted more for the market and that was fine but it was too late to start lettuce for seed as it needs a long season to grow and ripen the seeds. Generally, the temperate crops either quit, or slowed way down. Either way, our seed harvests were really low from these crops.

The heat loving crops had various responses: the sweet potatoes loved it! We had a stellar crop of sweeties last year; in fact, the best ever. Believe it or not, this was from one sweet potato plant.

The tomatoes dropped all of their flowers in the heat, but pushed through and produced more flowers soon after and did well otherwise. Peppers were unaffected, likewise cucumbers. Our corn was tasselling during the heat wave and I think the pollen was affected by it because we had a less than stellar (crappy) harvest of corn.

What about that crazy atmospheric river that flooded out much of the lower province? At our place we were anywhere from ankle to knee deep in water, and it stayed that way for three weeks. Being November all of our crops were harvested, but we did have garlic, kale, and turnips in the fields. I thought they were doomed, but amazingly they all without exception did well. Go figure.

Rain in the winter is okay for us, but rain during the growing season— too much at least— is terrible. That is what we endured this Spring. We had January/February weather all the way until July. I thought the seed growing year was going to be a washout and I didn’t even plant some crops. Dried beans, a staple of my business and our household didn’t get planted this year because I thought there wouldn’t be enough time to grow them out and get them to the drying stage before the fall rains started. If only I had a looking glass into the future and saw that we would have the hottest, driest October ever I would have sowed them for sure, but alas!

This is what it is like now. I find myself wondering if we will be on the receiving end of some new record breaking weather event, and I try to plan for… something. We bought a new greenhouse to have more area that is “controllable”. We can plant a crop inside if the weather is too cold or wet and still get a harvest. Or, we can harvest an outside seed crop like dried beans if it looks like we are going to get a freaky rain event and finish drying them inside. Basically it gives us more control.

We also put in drainage around a field to help move the water better in case we get more rain events like last November.

Most of all, we are realizing that diversity is the key to dealing with wacky weather. Diversity is the Key. During these several weather events we had some losses, sure, but we also had successes too, and that is because we are growing dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables. This super warm, dry October was the tail end of a four month drought, and I know that the forests and grasses, bugs and birds wanted rain, yet it was a blessing to many farmers who had seeds to dry, or squash to ripen, or grapes to ripen enough to use for wine. If not for the warm October, many of us farmers would have had a terrible year because of the late, cold spring.

I’m a glass half full kind of guy, or at least I try to be. This weird weather is making all of us farmers better at our jobs, because we have to be. The weather is gonna do what weather does and we will adapt. For several thousand years of farming, humans have dealt with all sorts of weather, and we are still here. That is something to chew on. Best of the day to you.