Sprout Farm Newsletter July 11, 2026        sproutfarm.net         open 9-5 daily

Hello Everyone,

Well, you've been asking, you've been calling, you've been sending up smoke signals and I can now confirm- We have corn! I picked up corn from Sauchuk farm in Plympton for the second day in a row. It is a little small but it is oh so sweet. The price went up a little so it is not $1.00/ear. Unfortunately we will not be getting blueberries from Sauchuk Farm due to a lack of blueberry pickers. He has pick your own blueberries but there is no one to pick them wholesale. Wild blueberries are delicious but the bushes set fruit buds in August and that is a pretty dry month around here. If you want to know if there will be wild blueberries this year, just look at the rainfall for last summer. We had over 5” of rain this past week. That will go a long way to alleviating the dry dusty conditions we've had over the last few weeks. It's also good for the corn to get a good drink. The rain loosened the soil so much that some of the sunflowers leaned to the side and now the flowers won't be straight. It's always something new.

The garlic has been harvested and is drying along with the first planting of onions. The first row of beets is in the cooler and all I see is a row of weeds. I know I just weeded that area less than two weeks ago. How did they grow so fast? The snap pea season seemed short for some reason but I'll soon be picking beans. Most of the plants look health and some, well, not so much. I'm just happy I don't see any signs of rust, on the beans, not the truck. We took care of the truck over the winter and now it looks great. The lettuce is still large and bountiful along with the kale and Swiss chard. It is time to start a second planting of kale so we will have lots of it when the weather turns frosty. The Eastham turnip from last fall is setting seed pods but they are far from ready. I'm going to see if I can get the seeds from last year to germinate. I never know how they will turn out but you just have to keep trying. We have lots of tomatoes, zucchini and summer squash.

We are down to the last few flowers and last few tomato plants. The greenhouses are full of mum plants and the boys have done a great job weeding them. This week's job has been to scout for Colorado potato beetles in the eggplant and the potatoes. On the first day out William and I each filled up a 24 oz jar of beetles. That must have been over 1k of insects but we only found four egg clusters to crush. After three days there's only a couple of dozen bugs so we may see a pesticide free harvest. The scouting will continue as long as the plants look healthy.

We have a bumper crop of Potomac snap dragons for our cut flower bouquets. I will take those over the 'rocket' variety any day. We await our first Benarys asters, not zinnias- we have those, but asters. That's one plant we hold our breath and hope that it stays healthy all the way until it is time to cut the stems. Let's just say it is sensitive to soil conditions.

This was a surprise- we have fish! As the pond lost water we were able to see the three tiny koi that  we had added to the pond after the great koi disappearance last year. We'll have to do something about the algae but the fish survived the winter and that's all that counts. We were convinced that they had died. After all we had been searching for them without seeing them all spring. You know they must be small if we didn't see them until July. Now Jay or James has the incentive to patch the pond liner and fill the pond up. I miss the hungry fish and it will take years for those babies to grow up.

The kitten report: Wheezie is fat and greedy for treats. I don't think it will be long before she finds a dark corner and enlarges the family. Scruffy stills comes around everyday for fresh water but he doesn't hang out with us. He runs away if you even look at him. He doesn't go far but he's hopeless. James says, “If there's an orange kitten, we're keeping it.” I reminded him that orange cats are almost always male and he said that's OK. There's something about the personality of orange cats that we all love. They rule!

That's all for now. Stop by and see what we have growing for you.

Jay and Phyllis Sprout