We’ve had a long, dreary winter that punished the northeast with bone chilling temperatures. Our growers have been irritable about the amount of rain and cold temps we’ve had this spring as well. As we entered May, the sun started to peak out and warm things up. Long Island farmers have been working away, planting, plowing, and harvesting asparagus and other wintered over crops such as cilantro and flat parsley.

Now that things are starting to pick up locally, Hapco Farms has started store drops to Stop & Shop East End Locations, supplying the shelves of Riverhead, Hampton Bays and Southampton stores with fresh  Long Island Asparagus.

We checked in with Hampton Bays Produce Manager Steve – who has been recently transferred to Hampton Bays from East Islip, on how the local grass works in the store from a produce manager’s perspective. “Great looking product, customers were very pleased to see Long Island Grown product this early in the season”.

As we move through the end of May and into the month of June, we will watch temperature’s and be in harvest with asparagus until the heat hits 90 degrees, then everything will just turn to seed. Most years we see first week of June harvesting all lettuces and greens, this year with the cooler and wetter weather, we will be pushed back 7-14 days.