Last year's spring garden did OK, but anything we tried to carry past June did not fair very well without irrigation. Nagel said gardeners should carefully monitor rainfall on their crops and irrigate when they go a week without rains, even in relatively mild weather. Minimal damage was reported from the recent cold snap, and weather has been ideal for the early planted crops of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, greens, spinach and English peas. Other crops including Irish potatoes, summer squash and sweet corn are off to a good start. Nagel said commercial vegetable growers typically plant earlier than home gardeners.
Penal farms are among the state's largest producers of garden vegetables.
While the largest farm is at Parchman, others are also located at prisons in Hinds and Greene counties. Mark Gillie, Extension agricultural agent in Greene County, said the South Mississippi Correctional Institute was able to use transplants from their greenhouses. Most of the county's gardeners anticipated some cold snaps in April. Now their gardens are beginning to show some drought stress if supplemental water has not been provided. Gardeners fall into one of those extremes or somewhere in between.