Podcast # 162 – December Update


It’s December in Elmore County, and the weather is delightful. Way too delightful if you ask us.

Amanda and our friend Andrew Westover (clearly overdressed) with the pond in the background

We’re seeing budding of the fruit trees, and one of our poor LSU Blacks has actually produced a December fig. That can’t be good, of course, because we know it’s just a matter of time before we get a hard freeze. But we have no choice right now. When the weather is delightful, we want to enjoy it. And that’s exactly what we did when our friend Andrew Westover came to see us at the farm.

Our focus in this week’s podcast is how we may grow differently in response to the warm fall if this continues. We discuss the possibility of a bifurcated summer growing season, with an early spring planting that we look to harvest in May and June, followed by the “okra doldrums,” so called because it’s the season during which nothing grows much except the okra. Then, around early August we would bring on a second planting of heat-loving veg. With the judicious use of frost blanket, this “second summer season” may be harvestable well into December.

Listen – 21:04

The Longleaf Breeze Planting Database

The Longleaf Breeze Daily Farm Log

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