Most Metro Vancouver farmers are grateful for the 31.3 millimetres of rain that poured in Vancouver July 24 through 26 – though the benefit of that wet weekend varied widely depending on what crop is grown.
Blueberry farmers, for example, say that the rain came in such a torrential burst that their blueberries have started to split. That’s because blueberry plants greedily gulp water from surrounding drenched soil and inject that moisture suddenly into the berries, causing the fruit to burst.
“We also couldn’t get blueberry pickers to work in the rain,” said Bremner Foods Ltd. principal Terry Bremner. “It wasn’t like the B.C. blueberry industry lost $100 million or anything like that because of the rain, but there was an impact.”
Many of Bremner’s split blueberries remain salable but will be sold for processing instead of being sold fresh for a higher retail price.
Bremner, who farms about 10 acres of cranberries in addition to 90 acres of blueberries, said that the drenching was excellent for the cranberries, which need some moisture during the summer even though they will not be ready for harvest until late September or October.
“The rain was a negative overall for us, but it was probably good for the farming community overall,” he said.
Indeed, W&A Farms principal Bill Zylmans was gushing with enthusiasm when contacted by BIV on his Richmond farm.
“It was a million-dollar rain,” said Zylmans, who farms about 500 acres of land, including about 180 acres of potatoes, which badly needed the rain. So did his 25 acres of mixed vegetables, such as beans and cauliflower.
His three acres of dill-pickle-sized cucumbers are just starting to be ready to harvest, and the rain added a much-needed dose of moisture to get them plump.
About half of Zylman’s acreage is either fallow or is growing grain and hay for cows, which he said were doing a “happy dance” as they basked in the rain.
Zylmans’ strawberry season is over now given that he grows a traditional B.C. variety that only ripens in June.
Other strawberry growers, such as Driediger Farms principal Rhonda Driediger, have experimented by growing Albion strawberries that have multiple blooms, including in July.
Driediger told BIV that the rain burst damaged some of her blueberries much like it did to Bremner. Her strawberries, however, were unaffected because that crop is grown using a system where a plastic sheet covers the plants’ roots and all necessary irrigation happens under that plastic.
Fraserland Farms principal Brent Harris, who farms about 1,500 acres in Delta – mostly corn, beans and peas – said the rain “will help the corn, but a lot of the corn has already been stunted this year and we’re just not going to recover that ground.
“We could have had a rain that was twice as much and a month earlier and it would have had a much greater impact.” •
