Wet weather pushes back growing season, prices may rise

The wet spring has put some farmers behind schedule in Essex County.

Lee and Maria's is a farm, produce-delivery service and market in Kingsville. Co-owner Kevin Black said they should be picking lettuce and kale now and getting close to broccoli and cabbage, but that isn't happening this year.

"We're running right now three, four weeks late on our planting schedule of where we should be,which will end up having some implication down the road for sure," he said.

Some farmers were able to plant early, Black said, but most of them would have lost their crops to drowning because of the all the rain.

• Water level records broken on Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair
• Flooded basements and roads, plus flood warnings for southwestern Ontario

Lee and Maria's has a goal every year to have corn available for Canada Day, but it doesn't look like it will happen this year.

Corn prices

Black said "a lot of the farmers" in the area have had issues with corn.

"So there's a chance there will be a little bit of corn early, but the amount of volume definitely won't be there and I would assume prices would be substantially higher than people are used to," he said.

Those prices will be a bit higher than normal around mid-June, Black predicts, butonce July and August come with some drier weather, things should go back to usual.

Right now he is hoping for a stop in the rain and some days with a lot of sunshine. With that, they may be able to catch up in one to two weeks. But even so, Black said the heat will only help so much.

"It still takes the same amount of time for a seed to turn into a plant and produce a vegetable," said Black."You kind of have to just live withit. That's just the way nature is."