Boss's Corner 

It looks like we are now officially into a moderate drought designation, last week we were in the abnormally dry designation. This is a major drought year and corn is and will be hard it. We haven't seen anything like it since 1988. Many areas have been even harder hit than Newaygo County. For instance, reports are from Berrien county that sweet corn that wasn't irrigated and grown on upland soil is a complete failure. In southern Illinois the intense heat and dryness combined to produce ears of field and sweet corn without kernels and many fields have already been plowed under. When the temperature reaches above 100F, corn might produce ears if it is irrigated but there will be no or few kernels since corn pollen isn't viable at extreme temperatures. This happened to me in 1988 with at least one field of sweet corn.

To try and distribute our 30 gallons per minute of water from our 4 inch well we are using several miles of drip tape. While this sounds like a lot it covers less than 5 per cent of our acreage, although we do move it every few days. It's a real battle and takes more time and energy than one would think. Drip tape is an extremely efficient way of irrigation since there is little evaporation. Also, it is the only practical means of irrigating crops grown in plastic mulch. Presently, we grow peppers, tomatoes, muskmelon, seedless watermelon, cucumbers, summer squash and sweet potatoes using plastic mulch. This year we have used roughly a mile of plastic mulch.

Our pickling cucumbers are again in good supply (we are running drip tape through our patches) and are of exceptional quality as well as quantity. We suspended our special prices for a few days last week because of lack of supply. This week our prices will be: 25 cents each or 10 for $2.00, 25 for $4.00 and 50 for $7.00.

This week we will start picking our third and fourth patches of sweet corn. The corn now is much sweeter than Quickie, which is long gone. It is also larger in size with fewer earworms. We no longer are selling them by the Baker's dozen. The price is now 35 cents an ear, 3 for a dollar and $4.00 a dozen.

Last week we sold out most days of our SunSugar cherry tomatoes and our Little Red tomatoes. This week our supply will be increasing so we hope to have them available all day long. Our high-tunnel is also producing more regular sized slicing tomatoes although it won't be until next week before our field-grown slicers will likely be ready. At that time we should have a good supply. Shortly after that we should start to have some varieties of our heirlooms.

We have started pulling our famous Newaygo Newaygo Sweet Onions and they are as sweet as ever! If you like sweet onions you should try these! BTW watermelon love this weather since 90F feels cool to them but it is even getting a bit too dry for them. Since watermelon roots have been known to go down 6 feet, they can take drought better than most crops. As you would expect, our watermelons are lovin' this brutal summer and should start ripening earlier than normal!

Nashle,

Tom

P.S. Take advantage of the season by making some refrigerator pickles--a simple recipe we tried out earlier this week follows!  

• Kosher or pickling salt
• 6 pickling cucumbers, trimmed and halved lengthwise
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup distilled white vinegar or apple cider vinegar
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced lengthwise (try our sweet and mild Newaygo Newaygo Onions)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 4 tsp. kosher salt
• 3 tbsp. pickling spice or a mixture of dill seeds (1 tbsp) and black peppercorns (2 tsp)
• 2 tsp. mustard seeds