After a very warm Winter, and unusual weather in the Spring, Maryland farms face some considerable challenges. Deep Run Farms is taking steps to ensure a robust, high quality product for its CSA and wholesale produce customers.
“The weather at the beginning of the season has been challenging,” explained Greg Horner, Operations Manager at Deep Run Farms (click here to read more “About Us”), taking a moment from planting more sweet corn, cantaloupe and watermelon over this Memorial Day weekend.
“It started with the mild weather we had over the winter. Usually there’s more of a freeze, and that cleans out the soil. This year, everyone in Maryland, and all over the East Coast, are going to have problems with insects and fungus that have survived the winter.”
“This just means that we’ve had to take further measures to protect our young crops. Usually, these problems appear later in the season, when the plants are already established. Fortunately, we’ve been doing this for 35 years, and we know how to adapt to these kinds of conditions.”
“That’s why we scout the fields for problems every day, take preventative measures, and innovate – that’s how we’re going to provide our customers with a high quality crop, despite those challenges.”
Deep Run Farms has been providing wholesale produce to customers in Maryland for 35 years (Click here to see our Wholesale Produce Price List)
Wholesale produce customers demand very high quality fruits and vegetables, and Deep Run Farms takes steps to ensure that level of quality.
“We’re always looking for the best varieties of all of our crops. We make sure to keep up with the latest hybrids and strains as they’re developed, and when we find one that has superior taste, we move on to that variety. Our wholesale customers demand that,” said Greg, “We’ve seen improvements in strands of white corn, and we seek out hybrids with better taste and sugar content. We’re testing new varieties of tomatoes for better taste, larger size, and higher yield.”
Deep Run Farms supplies wholesale produce to grocery stores, restaurants, and places like Carroll County Public Schools:
“They need large quantities of fruits and vegetables, of course, and we’re continuing to expand our acreage. In the past year, we’ve grown from 235 to over 250 acres. We have short season field corn planted on these new fields, we’ll harvest that in September, and then plant a cover crop, and those fields will be ready next year.”
Deep Run Farms’ Wholesale Produce – High Yield, High Quality, Superior Taste at Competitive Pricing
“As it stands this year,” said Greg, “we can easily do two to three hundred boxes of tomatoes a week, and 2000 dozen ears of sweet corn.”
Greg went on to explain that he was very optimistic about the coming year: “There are always challenges. Last year, we had very dry weather followed immediately by hurricanes late in the season, but we ended up with a great pumpkin crop.” In fact, Deep Run Farms’ pumpkin harvest was so impressive, it got the attention of the USDA’s official blog (click here to see the USDA article). “Carroll County has great conditions for tomatoes and pumpkins.”
CLICK HERE to contact Deep Run Farms for more information about Wholesale Produce.
Check out this video, below, of Greg Horner and his buddy, “Jules”, preparing the fields for 2012…
More images of our spinach, chard, cabbage, and pepper fields: Wholesale Produce Maryland…