W&A Farms operator Invoice Zylmans expects an excellent pumpkin and squash harvest | Rob Kruyt
Metro Vancouver’s heat and dry late summer season and early drop have been a boon for B.C. agriculture.
About the only grievances could be from cranberry farmers who will not have their crop all set for Thanksgiving on Oct 10 for the reason that their berries have not but turned crimson.
“The heat climate for cranberries is delaying the harvest as we are not acquiring color due to warm evenings,” Richberry Group owner and Ocean Spray chairman Peter Dhillon instructed BIV.
“That’s all we are struggling with now. The spring and early summer time wasn’t good for the reason that we had also much drinking water – rain.”
Dhillon nevertheless expects a bumper crop, just one particular that is a little bit later on than typical.
Harvesting cranberries does not have to have rain, he spelled out, as cranberry farmers can flood their fields to get the berries to float to the surface.
W&A Farms operator Bill Zylmans mentioned his only issue has been that some of his red potatoes are taking for a longer time to be all set to harvest.
“We’re ready for pores and skin established,” he mentioned. “Especially with purple potatoes with purple skins, it has to be pleasant and shiny. With the heat that we’ve been enduring in the last 10 times, it’s using more time for their skins to set.”
Better input charges this sort of as labour and fertilizer suggest that Zylmans expects that he will demand about 10 for each cent much more for crops than he did last year.
He has by now harvested about 75 for each cent of his 50 acres of potato fields since in mid-September he thought it was the correct time to commence finding the vegetable out of the floor. He believed at the time that waiting around to harvest potatoes would arrive with the danger that torrential rain would wipe out some of his crop.
As it turned out, had he waited, his potatoes would have been in a position to increase greater and he would have a lot more tonnage to sell to wholesalers.
“We’ve been irrigating a little bit more to hold points expanding,” he added.
Zylmans planted his pumpkins in mid-June – afterwards than normal for the reason that the area experienced a damp and awesome spring. He assumed at the time that the late planting may signify that the pumpkins would not absolutely ripen.
Now he anticipates a banner year for pumpkins and squash.
“They’re coming together fantastic, Zylmans said.
“You’re seeing lots of lovely orange pumpkins out there previously now in the market for Thanksgiving foods and décor.”
He has but to harvest about 80 for every cent of his pumpkins because he needs to help you save the harvest for the direct-up to Halloween.
Zylmans also grows brussels sprouts and bok choy on his 200-acre Richmond farm, and he is content that he is in a position to harvest people crops slowly but surely, and have a extended increasing window, to allow element of the harvest be more experienced.
B.C. carrots are inclined to be grown in the Sumas Prairie, and all those crops are also in a position to mature bit by bit with farmers ready to get their time with the harvest.
In Langley, Driediger Farms owner Rhonda Driediger informed BIV that she has also had a banner yr.
“The lengthier, hotter weather conditions has been great for late-year strawberries and raspberries – practically everybody is on drip irrigation,” she mentioned.
“I do not consider anybody is actually complaining about the weather, nevertheless. We know it is a coastal rainforest, and it is likely to start off raining at some point.”
