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Hi,
Well the week wasn't as hot as forecast and there seemed to be more rain than forecasted. The result was the Sweet Corner Planter is still forecasting July 16 for the first corn. However, since corn silk was visible on June 29 on many of the corn plants, I am forecasting Friday July 15 for the first corn. By the way, I am assuming 16 days between silking and picking, which is rather short (18-19 days is more typical. However, the extra early variety which I planted in my first patch seems to get ripe 16 days after silking, assuming normal warm to hot July weather.) One other interesting point. July 14 is our long term average for the first sweet corn picking date. It is also interesting that since May 1, the average temperature has been very close to normal here in Newaygo County. Important Note: In next week's newsletter I will give a date when will start to pick our first sweet corn. We also will have a sign down at the market letting everyone know when we will start picking. This date can be anywhere from Wednesday July 13 to Saturday July 16. The first corn will be a sugar enhanced xtra-early bi-color and its ear size is typically smaller than our other later corn. However, its quality is quite good. Tuesday of this week is the start of our green bean picking. By the end of the week or early next week, we should have enough beans to sell in quantity at the season's lowest price. We try to encourage customers to can or freeze beans early before we get so busy picking everything else that we can't concentrate on beans. The way we do this is put our season's low price on ½ bushels early in the season and then usually raise it later when time is even more precious than it is now. Our bagged price, though, will probably remain the same. The first planting (we will have about 10 plantings altogether) of beans this year is large-about a half an acre-and it is doing fabulously. The main reason we put the electric deer fence up was to protect the beans. To be honest, we wouldn't be planting beans if it wasn't for the fence-the deer started ravaging them about 7 years ago. We also started to lose about a quarter of our sweet corn crop shortly before our first electric fence went up. While we won't have any pickling cucumbers on Monday, we should be picking them later in the week. As many of you know already, pickling cucumbers are great eaten fresh just like slicing cucumbers! Our slicing cukes should start next week. We are really into beet harvest. The beets really look nice out in the field and they are nice and tender and sweet! We only grow hybrid beets which, though they look like Detroit Dark red beets, are much sweeter (they have sugar beet genes running through their red flesh) and stay tender longer than the Detroit Dark red ones. The only good thing about the Detroit Dark red beets is that their seed is dirt cheap. Our zucchini is really coming in. I am personally in charge of picking both our zucchini and yellow summer squash. We started our first zucchini plants in our greenhouse and planted them in plastic mulch with drip tape beneath the plastic mulch. The result wasn't only an earlier harvest but very high quality zucchini. Our second planting of yellow summer squash is starting to ripen and we should have an abundance of yellow squash by the middle of the week. In the past, good quality, young and tender yellow summer squash has usually sold out before noon. This year we have planted so much that we shall see how huge the demand really is! Later this week we will be selling SunSugar cherry tomatoes. The plants in the high tunnel are around 6 feet and still growing fast. Since they grow so tall we trellis them up to around 8 feet after that the start to hang down. The ripe tomatoes now are within 2 feet from the ground. Later on they will be easier to pick. It looks like it won't be until next week before the little red tomatoes will be ready in quantity. Some of these little reds are already good sized-comparable to a medium sized regular tomato. Nashle, Tom
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