Hot weather drying out Nova Scotia crops

Despite a streak of hot, dry weather, farmers in Nova Scotia are optimistic about the rest of the summer.

Some of Josh Oulton’s crops are loving these sun-soaked days in the Annapolis Valley, N.S.

“This fruit is looking really good,” he says as he checks out his peppers and tomatoes.

Others in the fields are having a tougher time with the hot, dry conditions.

“Vegetables are 70 per cent water and so if Mother Nature is not doing that for us, then we need to provide that through irrigation and pumps and ponds and wells and streams, and whatever we can get our hands on,” Oulton says.

He figures an inch of rain a week is sufficient for his growing needs, but Oulton says that hasn’t been coming. Now, with the ground drying out, he’s forced to start watering his plants.

“If you’re on some really well drained, sandy soil, yeah, you’re looking at dust,” he says.

There’s trouble in Sam Lutz’s apple orchards, too, as some of the leaves are yellowing.

“Things have really started to dry up in June particularly was quite rough. We had about 50 mm of rain for the whole month, but about 60 per cent of that came all in one day,” says Lutz.

He is not able to supply water to his orchard because his sources are running dry. Lutz’s mature trees with deeper roots are still doing OK but the young ones with shallower root systems aren’t growing.

“The trees aren’t growing as much as we hoped which delays them filling out and filling their space and will eventually delay them coming into production,” he says.

The hot and dry conditions is also causing problems of animals that graze on fields. The grass is either dead or not growing and that’s forcing some farmers to start using the hay they had been storing for the winter.

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