KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — While we've got some rain in the forecast coming up, we know that this summer has been particularly dry.
Based on the latest drought monitor for mid-July, this is the most widespread moderate drought that we've seen since about 2007. East Tennessee did have a drought in 2016 that was more intense, but not quite as widespread.
Now, local farms are seeing the impact.
“We do a lot of rain dances around here,” Beardsley Community Farm Manager Lia Bevins said smiling. “I have a whole bunch of peppers that haven't survived this year. My beans have kind of been struggling…. There's a lot of leaves wilting on our pear trees and apple trees. The blackberries are really crispy.”
10Weather Impact Meteorologist Cassie Nall provided some insight, saying the culprit is the drought we’re experiencing.
“We had a really wet spring, but now that we've come into the summer season, that spicket just shut off,” Nall explained.
Nall uses a drought monitor to check in on conditions.
“This month has really been a scorcher so far,” she detailed. “In fact, we've had the third warmest start to the month of July on record. And when you combine that heat along with the very dry conditions, obviously, that's trouble for agricultural interests.”
These dry conditions are causing difficulty for farms like Beardsley, which is a nonprofit urban demonstration farm, spanning 4.5 acres near downtown Knoxville. Typically, Bevins said the farm yields about 13,000 pounds of fresh produce a year that it takes to local pantries and kitchens in the area.
“I'm just noticing the plants are slowing down, they're not producing quite as early in the year as they were,” Bevins said.
Although there's rain in the forecast coming up, the top layer of soil is extra hard because of the drought.
“Because we have lovely clay in Tennessee, as that clay dries out, it can really harden," Nall said. "That can make it difficult for farmers to add crops to the ground or to harvest the ones that are in the ground or when it rains, you get more runoff. So instead of the ground initially absorbing all of that moisture, that moisture hits that hard-packed ground and it runs off. So sometimes the rain that we get isn't beneficial right away until that ground starts to get soaked. And then the moisture can actually be absorbed.”
Nall said the ideal weather that farmers should hope for is light rain, which can moisten the ground to the point it can absorb more rain.
While Bevins waits for that rain, she said her team is focused on watering extra this season and waiting for some cooler weather.
“We usually take precaution and just try to water at the base so you're not putting water on the leaves of the plants and maybe encouraging disease or like a sun scald from the really hot sun that'll come out in the middle of the day. And just really upping the amount that we water,” Bevins explained. “Luckily the summers in Knoxville are really long, so you can kind of continue growing throughout October so I think we're just expecting maybe a little bit later of a harvest this year.”
When it comes to the winter season, Bevins said she’s noticed it’s also “extreme.”
“We're kind of noticing the winters are also harsh here too,” she reflected. “And so when the soil is put under that kind of stress, it'll really influence the kind of bugs that come in, the good bugs, the bad bugs. So it's definitely something that will impact the entire ecosystem, I'm just not quite sure what it'll look like.”
While she’s not sure what the future will hold, Bevins said she’s keeping track of the weather each season to get an idea of how it might be trending.
For this season, Bevins said she's planning to pull up some of the plants that aren't doing so well and re-harvest some produce that might do a little bit better with this hot and dry weather like squash and zucchini.
WBIR also spoke with the East Tennessee Farmers Association for Retail Marketing (FARM), which said now is an especially important time to support local farmers at markets in the area.
The next market coming up is on Tuesday at Ebenezer United Methodist Church in West Knoxville from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
