Agriculture

Likely as a child, you too, collected fireflies in a jar and took them to bed to light up your room on a warm summer night. I remember getting my parents to puncture the lid of a mason jar, so the magical insects could breathe.

Well, it turns out that all that light flashing wasn’t meant for our entertainment but rather about entertaining love.

Potatoes, garlic and onions: These tree vegetables are staples worldwide largely because of their versatility and their storage-ability.

Late July and August is when our spring planted onions, garlic and potatoes reach maturity and are ready for harvest. If you want to harvest some new potatoes, onions or garlic before they reach maturity, enjoy them at the table in short order.

As storms battered Shelby County and much of the state on Wednesday, farmers had to be shaking their heads.

Many years they’re left looking for water during July as drought conditions begin to set in, but all that rain this year is causing its own problems.

Senate Agriculture Chair Paul Hornback, who also farms tobacco and other crops in Shelby County, said that local farmers are suffering, but the worst tobacco damage is in the southern portion of the state.

“The wet weather has devastated the crop down there,” he said.

By this time last year, I had picked loads of cherry tomatoes. The hot spring worked to the advantage of ripening tomatoes by the 4th of July.

This year has played out a little differently, but the tomatoes don’t seem to mind. They look great, have generous fruit set and will be ripening soon enough.

So far the plants are remarkably free of any pest problem, brown or yellowing leaf or rotting fruit. Most are heirloom varieties. They were fertilized once at planting with fish emulsion and immediately mulched with newspaper and pine straw.