Left: Planted in October, this spinach plot survived winter in the tunnel, and powered up in spring with April’ s light and warmth. Right: Summer squash from fall planting at Sandy Spring Gardens. The entire field was mulched with hay. Despite the very dry weather in fall of 2025, it was a bumper crop. And no weeds!
wheat) are more tolerant of hot, dry weather, and
Practices that conserve soil moisture include farmers are constantly watching and reconsidering mulching with hay, straw, or plastic sheeting. Every variety selections as the seed producers develop new year we grow a cover crop at Sandy Spring Gardens strains. Broccoli is a cool-weather crop, not well suited to central Maryland weather, so I need heat-toler- few weeks to ensure that crop won’ t regrow, and then
that is rolled down in May, covered with a tarp for a
ant selections and a very early spring start to bring in a we set out squash or cabbage-family transplants with a successful harvest. Variety selections must be matched trowel— planting right into the soil of an otherwise undisturbed field— where the to the high humidity in our Mary- mulch
land summers, and we are constantly looking for disease-resistant strains in corn, wheat, and soybeans, as well as in vegetable crops like cucumbers and tomatoes and squash. Crop rotations, to avoid growing the same crop in the same soil year after year, help to reduce disease and weed pressure and boost soil fertility.
Irrigation systems must be upgraded in response to drought, and while this is feasible on a five-acre
While it may be true that agriculture has played a significant role in bringing about changes in the atmosphere that created the global climate problem, it is also true that agriculture can be a large part of the solution.
was grown-in-place. Vegetable growers in Montgomery County are using high tunnels and greenhouses to extend the growing season and to protect crops from high winds and temperature swings. Tomatoes do particularly well in tunnels here, because every summer morning a heavy dew condenses on the foliage of outdoor tomatoes. But visit a tomato tunnel on a humid morning in June or July, and vegetable farm, it is out of the question in a 500-acre you will see that dew forms not on the foliage but on field with rolling terrain in the Maryland Piedmont. the top of the greenhouse plastic. Tunnel-grown tomatoes keep going when outdoor tomatoes succumb here
We can expect that water will become an increasingly scarce resource if drought persists, and we may be to foliar disease. only a few years away from conflicts over water access While it may be true that agriculture has played between farms and city-water systems and residential a significant role in bringing about changes in the atmosphere that created the global climate problem, it wells— conflicts we read about in reports from the U. S. Southwest. is also true that agriculture can be a large part of the
plenty I spring 2026 7