{"id":93593,"date":"2019-06-11T05:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T11:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/late-winter-storms-stunt-summer-produce-in-la-plata-county\/"},"modified":"2019-06-11T05:03:09","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T11:03:09","slug":"late-winter-storms-stunt-summer-produce-in-la-plata-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/late-winter-storms-stunt-summer-produce-in-la-plata-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Late winter storms stunt summer produce in La Plata County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jordan
Jordan Meyers of Summit Roots Farm said he hasn\u2019t been hit as hard as some farmers by late snowstorms thanks to \u201ccaterpillar tunnels\u201d he bought two years ago to protect his summer plants. Most of his produce remained in the tunnels as of Saturday.<\/span>Bret Hauff\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Winter 2018-19 brought many benefits to Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

It dumped enough moisture to lift the region from the most threatening drought in the country. It brought snow and cool temperatures that set records at Purgatory Resort. And now the above-average snowpack is melting and filling area waterways to the brim.<\/p>\n

But a late freeze and snowstorms in May also stunted the growth of some local summer produce \u2013 including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and beans \u2013 forcing growers to get creative to meet demand.<\/p>\n

Lucky for Jordan Meyers, a grower at Summit Roots Farm in Dolores, he was prepared.<\/p>\n

About two years ago, Meyers said he bought what he called \u201ccaterpillar tunnels\u201d to protect his plants from unpredictable weather. The tunnels are easy to install and cost about a quarter of what a typical greenhouse may cost.<\/p>\n

Each tunnel, made of a translucent greenhouse plastic designed to capture energy from the sun to keep plants warm in cooler temperatures, fits over rows of plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to have food early and extend the season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sheila Payne, who grows with her son, Jesse, at Mockingcrow Farm near the bottom of Bondad Hill, uses something called a hoop house to help her summer produce thrive. A hoop house is something like a greenhouse, she said, but there\u2019s no climate control. It\u2019s a single layer of plastic that fits around a hoop that covers and protects the plants within.<\/p>\n

The space inside her hoop house is about one-third the area of her field space, so many of the crops she couldn\u2019t fit under the hoop house \u2013 like squash, beans and sunflowers \u2013 didn\u2019t fare so well during the freeze.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trick around here is season protection,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The winter wasn\u2019t a total bust for food producers, Payne said. Her spring crops \u2013 including mustard greens, collard greens, lettuce and the like \u2013 did well. It didn\u2019t get too hot too fast, and the moisture helped, she said.<\/p>\n

Perennial plants may have benefited from heavy snowpack, too, Payne said. Perennial plants persist through growing seasons, often regrowing each spring from the same root system. Most flowers are perennial. The benefit came when snow insulated the ground during the coldest part of the winter, protecting the root systems from damagingly low temperatures.<\/p>\n

And for subsistence farmers \u2013 people with home gardens \u2013 \u201cthis year fit the profile,\u201d said Clint Kearns, a certified master gardener<\/a>. A normal growing season in La Plata County is around 110 days, he said. That can dip to around 90 days in a bad year and about 120 days in a good year \u2013 a relatively narrow range, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell people, \u2018Don\u2019t plant anything before May 31,\u2019\u201d Kearns said. \u201cIt froze at my house (between Durango and Bayfield) on May 28 \u2013 it was 28 degrees for five hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although spring frost is not uncommon \u2013 freezing temperatures have been recorded as late as the second week of June<\/a> \u2013 the National Weather Service is predicting a low of no cooler than 47 degrees for at least a week. Kearns said he\u2019s telling everyone to plan on a 90- to 110-day growing season, and the clock is ticking.<\/p>\n

bhauff@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planting season has begun for subsistence farmers, master gardener says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[281,1587,13,445],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-farms","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-newsletter-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93593"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}