Blog post by Punch Haskell- Waiting for the heat

It seems like the more you stay in farming, the more unusual circumstances you can face.

Take this rice growing season. For the second straight year, we are faced with cool weather.  Who would have thought mid-July temperatures would struggle to reach 90 degrees?

Despite the lack of traditional heat, our fields look very good as they near the halfway point of the growing season.  This is panicle initiation time, where much of the energy in the plant goes to making the seeds.  I think we’ll see heading, where the first heads of grain develop on top of the plant, in a few weeks.

The unusual weather patterns have made weed control a challenge, but we have waited them out so we could be efficient in dealing with them.

The forecast for warming with temperatures well into the 90s next week would be very helpful to kick start the growing process.

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Punch Haskell grows rice in Colusa County and is part of a family farming operation that began approximately 60 years ago.