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Sprout Farm Newsletter August 31st, 2024 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily EXCEPT LABOR DAY

Hello Everyone,

We are taking a day off. We are closed Monday, Labor Day. I'm taking the day off but Jay is putting out the first of the chrysanthemums that you have been watching grow in the greenhouses since June. It's dark by 7:30 pm and the temperatures in the mornings can hover in the 50's so it isn't that uncomfortable to think about mums now. It's still too hot to breathe the air in places like Texas and Florida so enjoy the shoulder season. The spring flowers have long since shed their blooms and soon the fall colors glow from the tree tops to the leaves underfoot. I love this season because I beg, cider donuts or any kind of home made donuts, from the farms I travel to. The Big Apple makes old fashion donuts because they think cider is an ingredient that makes donuts tough. Really? They are delicious but I need more samples and Sauchuk Farm and C.N. Smith Farm are making the cider donuts early in the morning on weekends and the aroma is intoxicating. They contain my four favorite personal food groups: flour cooking in fat, sugar, cinnamon and cider. If they offer me a dogie bag, I take it and happily share it when I get home because no one eats while they drive.

Now back to the mums. We grow the mums in the greenhouses because mums are phototropic. They turn toward the light. Our land has a gentle slope and plants in pots on a slope will turn toward the light and look drunk. This is not good. So we grow mums on the only flat land we have, the greenhouses. Everyone said you couldn't grow mums in a greenhouse but we had to make it work or settle for purchasing mums from another grower and you know how Jay feels about that. So on Tuesday the mums will be out in the front yard, grouped by their color tags with their color signs and no sign of color on the buds except a few precocious yellows who just couldn't wait. I heard one customer tell me her mums came back this spring and I was surprised that anything that hybridized would go through the winter but then last winter wasn't that bad. So here's a video about growing and caring for mums. This gives pretty much the same advice that Jay gives most people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXpMr8Ek6qs&list=WL&index=1

We grow mums in a large mum pan so you start off with a large root ball but the sooner you get the plant in the ground, the sooner the root ball will expand enough to last through the winter. There's still a 50% chance they won't come back in the spring but if they do the old rule is to 'pinch them back three times by the Fourth of July.' You'll have to remember that because I know I'll forget to put the pinching schedule in the spring newsletter.

We should have peaches from the Big Apple until the middle of September so don't miss them. They are supplying us with four apple varieties,Ginger gold (huge), Gravenstein, Sansa and Paula Red. This is just the beginning and there are many more varieties to come. The cooler is full of interesting things but I'm still worried about weeds,which are tasty if you need a snack on the job, so I don't pay attention to who is harvesting what.

The kitten report. We have no kittens at this time but daddy kitty, Mr. Scruffy or Flathead, as he is called by our neighbor, is moving in like some timid feline squatter. For decades we've had feral cats come through the cat door in the basement, dine on dry food and leave by the same door when we come down the stairs. This week, Mr. Scruffy made his way through the cat door in the basement, up two flights of stairs and settled himself on the guest bed on the second floor. James was surprised to see him there in the middle of the night but Scruffy was even more surprised to see James and quickly made his way down the inner flights of stairs and out through the cat door to safety and anonymity. He'll be back. The lure of a warm wood stove in the basement will be too hard to resist come winter. That's OK. It doesn't cost us anything to share heat with a cat on a cold night.

That's all the news for now. Stop by and see what we have for you. We'll see you soon,

Jay and Phyllis Sprout