Sprout Farm Newsletter    Sept. 26th 2026     sproutfarm.net    open 9-5 daily until Halloween

Hello everyone,

Have we had enough rain yet? Our ponds and lakes should be close to full by now. Between the three inches two weeks ago and the 2.5 inch on Saturday everything is getting a good drink. I feel bad for all the business that depend on good weather for their outdoor activities. Try to help them out this week after the storm clears.

This week at the farm stand we have nine varieties of apples including Macouns for the first time this year. We now have butternut squash and fresh cranberries from Willow Cranberries in Wareham. We get them fresh after the sorting at the bog so you know they're fresh. We're getting our corn from Hanson Farm in Bridgewater and they still have cukes so you may find them at our stand. This is a fun time of year. We're getting apples in Wrentham and Plympton, corn in Bridgewater and squash and whatever we can find, wherever we can find it. We'll have to wait and see what happened to the pepper plants during the storm. I expect to see a lot of them flat on the ground. This will be a good test to see how well the yard sign holders worked to prop up the peppers and eggplant. Don't laugh. They're cheap, easy to pack flat and if you place them where the plant is leaning, you get the stem up off the ground. Actually, I was too cheap to go out and purchase something fancy that would work and settled for something I had around the house that might work. We've not had good luck with peppers in past years and that's why I was unprepared to handle plants full of peppers. We planted Eastham turnip but Jay won't be pulling it until Mid-late October and as you know we are closing for good on Halloween so it will be a short retail season for those turnips.

The greenhouses are clearing out and we have about half of our mums left for sale and at $5.99 for a 9” pot, that's a good deal. If you are planting them in the ground, take the time to loosen the soil and plant some spring bulbs around the base of the mum plant. The mums are hybridized so we don't expect them to come back in the spring. There are species mums that come back every year but they are unimpressive in color and form. If they come back for you, remember the old saying, pinch them three times before the 4th of July.  That will make them branch fuller. 

This is the time to start thinking about planting those spring bulbs. The bulb planting guides are getting fancy with the zones a and b but this guide will give you a good estimate on when to plant bulbs so they develop roots but not shoots before the frost.

https://cultivatingflora.com/when-to-plant-spring-bulbs-in-massachusetts-for-best-blooms/

If your garden is finished for the year, it is time to clean it up and plant a cover crop. It doesn't have to be fancy, even some rye grass will give your soil a good boost in the spring when you chop it and turn it in. We found that if you wait too long, you don't get germination and the winter winds just rearrange the soil until spring. Sensible people with sensible sized gardens can simply use mulch. Mashpee adopted lawn fertilizer restrictions several years ago. https://www.mashpeemec.us/mashpee-enacts-lawn-fertilizer-regulations/ If you live in a town other than Mashpee and you apply fertilizer to your lawn in the fall, you may want to Google your town and the words 'fertilizer restriction' to see if your town government has been busy while you were busy living the good life on Cape Cod. Cape towns are facing huge fines if they don't get the nitrogen levels reduced in the bays and estuaries. The state doesn't care about the lakes and ponds just the first two.

The kitten report: Goldie has settled into the house routine now that she is the only kitten here. She has her favorite cardboard clump on a wire toy that keeps her busy and several times a day she and Mom take turns racing around the house. I can predict there will be a loss of Christmas ornaments from the lower branches, once again this year. She is a love and she gets lots of gentle attention and slow blinks to let her know she's loved. We'll start bringing her outside after the storm and that's a long process where we show her the cat door for her safety and try to anticipate all the tiny places she will find to hide in. Eventually James and jay will have her following them like a puppy dog as they always do. Getting the other cats to accept her will be a much bigger challenge.

That's all the news for now.

Stop by and see what we have growing for you,

Jay and Phyllis Sprout