I walked all the way around the hay field and checked out all of the tried and true black cap plants near our house. This is all that I was able to harvest. Harvest season has just begun for us; this was my second day harvesting near the house but first day harvesting the perimeter of our hayfield.
This is a very small harvest by prior years' standards. Harvesting over the past 5 years, I've come to understand where the big patches of black cap plants are located. As I walked the hayfield perimeter today, I noticed that the tried and true spots for black caps were a lot less (both in size and in quantity).
In trying to figure out why this might be, I remembered that last year, we had the worst drought ever for our area (the worst drought that I've ever experienced in my Wisconsin lifetime (and I'm old) AND according our neighbors who've lived here a lot longer than we have).
Because black caps fruit on the new canes, and because (as my hypothesis goes) there were likely a lot less new cane's put out by the plants last year due to the plant stress caused by complete lack of rain (for months on end), the harvest this year is and will be less - significantly less.
I will hope that over the next year or two, our black cap patches fully recover. We're very on track with rain this year (so far - don't want to jynx it)...
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