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Post by imgrimmer on Sept 1, 2015 8:32:10 GMT -5
This is something I am wondering about. My impression is all my plants are belated in some way. E.g. beans sprouted as early as usual but refused to grow for weeks, the same with broad beans. It took tomatoes at least 2 weeks more to germination than usual, first fruits are about now. my citrus plants in the greenhouse with ideal conditions (at least from my point of view  ) omit completely the first flush in April blooming started in summer weeks too late, some are starting now and some are blooming a second time which is very unusual... Many people told me similiar things which is not a surprise as we live nearby but I wonder that some of you over there in America seem to have similiar experiences. What about you? Am I seeing ghosts? |
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 1, 2015 14:37:10 GMT -5
I have been seeing something very similar this year. I pretty much seem to think the same thing EVERY year, but by comparing those things I can (such as looking at the date of when something flowered this year to the date (via photo) the same thing did last year ) It seems to me that many things, especially the warm weather ones, are delayed by almost two months.
I tend to use my rice beans as a bellwether of things like this (since the are one of the few things that go in every year) Last year, I saw first flowers around mid June. This year, they only showed up (on the one that actually has them) about 1-1 1/2 weeks ago.
My beans (all of them, both the commons, the rice, the adzuki's etc.) also seemed to go into a sort of stasis for what seemed forever. Until literally almost the middle of July, none of the warmer weather ones seemed to be growing beyond seedling
My corn is the most depressingly hit. After being overjoyed that for the first time in don't know how long, a fair number of corn plants actually made it through the gauntlet of assault that the squirrels cause it. I now have to reconcile myself to the fact I STILL probably won't get anything back. None of them are any taller than about 12-18 inches, most are far shorter. Only ONE seems to have any tassel at all, and that is a tiny tab sticking out of the top of a tight sheaf of leaves that seems to show little to no sign of ever extending and actually distributing anything, and NONE show any sign of ears or silks.
The real problem with years like this is of course the total final yield. After all it's not like a delayed start to the season guarantees there will be a delayed end to it (i.e. just because it takes until the end of June for the weather to get to the point where it is actually sort of springy, doesn't mean that that summer weather is then going to linger on extra late so you will still be picking fresh tomatoes in November. Far too often (at least here) the cold weather comes early at the other end, and you just wind up with a minimal season. To make it worse I don't know about you, but here, we've started to lose the sort of gradual transition between the two (where in the spring it tends to get a bit warmer each day until the weather is sort of summery.) Now what we tend to get are this wild fluctuations (blazing hot one week sub zero the next) going on for months, which more or less destroy everything including things that can normally take cold (the warm spells fake them out to start growing, and then the freeze comes back and destroys the new material until the plants run out of energy.)
And of course the sharp changes mean that those that are producing are undersized and ill equipped to bear much of a load (I joked rather bitterly that it was just my luck that for the first time this year, I remembered to pull up the tall weeds in my bean patch that I usually have to leave because by the time I remember, the beans have intertwined on them, and this year almost none of the beans grew enough to be able to twine on ANYTHING).
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Post by imgrimmer on Sept 1, 2015 16:26:53 GMT -5
I tend to use my rice beans as a bellwether of things like this (since the are one of the few things that go in every year) Last year, I saw first flowers around mid June. This year, they only showed up (on the one that actually has them) about 1-1 1/2 weeks ago.
sounds like the worst year ever for rice beans?
My impression of the weather so far is not so bad as it is mirrored in my vegetables and indoor plants.
So far I can`t see a reason for this.
In the last years we had e.g. an early unusual warm spring with a long good summer last year and all my plants grew very well the year before it was the opposite. Weather and plant growing was obviously linked.
This year seems different.
Probably the weather this year is talking to the plants between the lines. Of course it could also depend on my point of view and the past seems often brighter as it was but the strange thing is that my indoor citrus plants behaved the same as the outdoor vegetables. How is weather talking to them? Except by sunshine which was more than usually.
Interesting your beans had that stasis too. It was even worse with peas.
Corn is the same like yours. It paused for weeks and is now half as tall as it was last year.
I made an interesting observation, i sow corn direct in the ground in very early spring half with a cold frame on it half without it. after removal of the cold frames when summer came only the former protected ones grew slowly but they grew the unprotected are still around 50 cm in height with nearly no ears on it. Suirrels are not a problem but I noticed slugs eating the tassel on the cobs which is a very good strategy for birth control...
Today is the meteorological start of autumn and weather is behaving like autumn forecast say it stays like that. Yesterday it was around 30°C, literally summer...
Where do you live?
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 1, 2015 17:16:49 GMT -5
In the Hudson Valley, near NYC. Sleepy Hollow (as in "Legend of" Headless Horseman Sleepy Hollow), to be precise.
Actually, to be purely precise no this isn't the worst year for rice beans. Technically, all of the years up to 4-5 years ago were the worst, since I never got any plants to flower at all (there are two major strains of rice bean, and only the scarcer short season one will actually have it's day length needs met up here. So it was mostly the wrong kind to begin with) I say "technically" because back then I was not actually planting them on purpose; my first actual crop to flower came from seed I had tossed out on the mulch pile for the animals to eat (since then, I have gotten a better handle at telling which kind I am seeing, and skewing in favor or the kind that actually grows.
This might have been the worst year ever for their germination. I'm used to the critters eating the vast majority of the seed I plant. In fact I sort of count on it for the rice beans (If the several pounds that go in ever went completely unmolested, the resultant thousands of plants would probably all strangle each other. ) but this year out of the pound or two planted (I don't usually weigh in advance, but it's more seed than I can hold in my hands four or five times over, and one of the reasons rice beans are called rice beans is that the seeds are about the size of rice grains.) And from that, I usually wind up with a couple 100 seeds who live long e enough to be considered past seedlings, and maybe 20 that get to the flowering and podding stage. This year about ten made it up out of the ground (of which eight or so are probably still there) and only one appears to be flowering (I can't be sure, the vines are all tangled up on one pole so it's hard to say whether all the flower panicles are attached to the same plant or not.) But in terms of flowering... I don't know. And that one is certainly well covered (the rice beans are still quite a heterogeneous population. Some make one or two flowers and then conk out. Other's make hundreds and keep on chugging till the frost get them (or to tell the truth till I get impatient, assume the frost is coming, and pull them up)
My peas did OK (for me) this year, but then I grow an obscure Italian pea called Piselle d' Ago, which I selected specifically for being from as far south as I could find and so having maximum heat tolerance for a pea (it's a mottled skinned soup pea, sort of similar to the Carlin peas you have over in England)
And there are good stories to go with the bad. The hot weather means the cowpeas are doing incredibly, those that lasted past seedlingdom had/have almost 100% flowering (though that may have a lot to do with nearly all of them being the same type (which with my patchwork method of planting is a rare thing) and me simply getting lucky. My corn may be a lost cause, but the food type Job's tears I planted in a pot (which are subtropical so possibly would not grow here at all) are doing fine, and I will get seed back with no trouble.
I often have the slug problem, except its ants and earwigs eating mine, and maybe crickets (I've never caught one at it, but I do find crickets camping out in pretty much every furled leaf, so they seem likely candidates.
It seems like the really early, cold tolerant stuff went normal. Peas did fine, barley did fine (well the conventional barley did, the sprat barley hasn't really done anything since no one told me I was supposed to sow it in the fall, not the spring.) , vetch experiment did beautifully.
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Post by reed on Sept 1, 2015 19:34:14 GMT -5
To make it worse I don't know about you, but here, we've started to lose the sort of gradual transition between the two (where in the spring it tends to get a bit warmer each day until the weather is sort of summery.)...the warm spells fake them out to start growing, and then the freeze comes back and destroys the new material until the plants run out of energy.) Tell me about it. That's partly why I want to find / develop short season everything, to maximize chances of getting a harvest in spaces between the weirdness. |
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Post by steev on Sept 2, 2015 0:43:19 GMT -5
Piselle d'Ago seems to have produced decently for me this year; how well the seed sprouts next year remains to be seen.
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Post by imgrimmer on Sept 2, 2015 2:26:00 GMT -5
reed steev did your plants have a normal start into this year?
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Post by reed on Sept 2, 2015 4:13:43 GMT -5
Mine started out pretty good then a month of rain nearly everyday took it's toll. I have four foot tall broccoli that never made a single head, I wanted the spot to get ready for some fall stuff so transplanted it to a place it can just stay, maybe it will do something this fall or winter.
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Post by steev on Sept 2, 2015 10:20:51 GMT -5
Much of what I sowed sprouted little or none.
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Post by philagardener on Sept 2, 2015 21:34:00 GMT -5
Mine started out pretty good then a month of rain nearly everyday took it's toll. I have four foot tall broccoli that never made a single head, I wanted the spot to get ready for some fall stuff so transplanted it to a place it can just stay, maybe it will do something this fall or winter. My Spring broccoli finally started making buds a few weeks ago - hoping it might pick up some steam once cooler weather sets in. |
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