Metro Vancouver’s hot summer may be making blueberries wilt but the hot temperatures are exactly what farmers have wanted.
“There’s nothing drastically in trouble,” said W&A Farms owner Bill Zylmans, who farms more than 500 acres in Richmond.
“Hot weather has been good for virtually everything. If there’s a crop suffering the most right now, it would maybe be the blueberries because if it’s really hot they go soft.”
He rates the summer so far as a seven on a scale of one to 10.
Zylmans told Business in Vancouveron Monday that he was panicking a few months ago when rain was falling almost constantly and days were cool. He had planted some of his crops in the early spring when the weather was nicer.
He said, “It was a crappy May and June was the pits."
During the foul weather, Zylmans was forced to wait instead of planting other crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, squash and pumpkins. Then he rushed to plant as much as he could.
He now expects his summer crop yield to meet his original expectations.
“But, talk to me in a month. Things could change.”