Urbanites who love the increasing convenience of the city’s booming farmers’ markets, may find Mother Nature has thrown a few surprises the next few weeks. Winter snowstorms, the wettest March on record and the current unseasonably hot weather have wrecked havoc for some farmers.
At the Union Square Greenmarket, farmers expect a two-week delay for lettuce and other “early crops” of spring, but find their fruit trees are blooming early — a problem if there’s cold snap.
“The soil was so mucky, you couldn’t till it,” Ryan Race, of New Jersey’s Race Farm said of why he’s two weeks late planting lettuce and other herbs. “When the lettuce isn’t here, people just don’t want to hear it. It cuts into our market.”
A fast snow melt and warm rain confused fruit trees at Joe O’Brien’s Healthway Farms in the Hudson Valley. “Our apricots are in full-bloom, three or four weeks early. I’ve never been this far ahead of schedule,” he said. A frost in early May could destroy the apricots, he fears.
