Sprout Farm

10/04/2026

Sprout Farm Newsletter Oct. 3, 2026 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily

until Halloween

Hello Everyone,

Finally a beautiful fall Saturday. The festivals, corn mazes and apple picking jaunts got the perfect weather they were hoping for. In Sept of 26 we saw nearly 9 inches of rain, and most of it fell on weekends. We don't control the weather, we just wait it out.

I just checked my notes. Jay say tell everyone, “It's not a rumor. We are retiring.” I asked him , “Is that the question you're getting?” He said it was. We all know he's going to be board in less than a year but he is looking forward to no obligations to the business.

Next. We will not be selling corn stalks or straw bales this year. It is just a few things more Jay is cutting down on. He said he told me earlier but I don't remember him saying that. I do not miss driving out into the corn field while the guys toss bundled corn stalks into the back of the truck. They would promise that they wouldn't shift on the way home to the Cape and I would regret not paying attention to instructions on knot tying while I was in the scouts many decades ago. It just wasn't a skill you'd use every day or every year. When we did try to tie down the stalks it was a guess as to what any knot did to hold anything down. My concern was reasonable. Once when driving back from Wilson's in Lexington, some of the small Christmas trees piled onto the back of the truck, blew off in the middle of Rte 2, just before Rte 128. Somehow I stopped and picked them up, went back to Wilson Farm and made them tie down everything. That's when I learned it was their company policy not to tie anything down. When I got home I used the damaged trees for brush for Christmas projects. It all ended well but I don't have the energy to deal with that type of problem so now I make sure everything is secure before I drive away.

Jay says we have nine varieties of apples but we have to wait for Monday to resupply the shelf with Macouns. Yes, our apple prices are VERY reasonable compared to some farms. I get to see them all. C.N. Smith Farm in East Bridgewater has set up their Halloween train room display. The small train goes around a large table filled with Halloween village miniatures and the big goblins and ghosts are around the edges. The room is off to the side of the farm stand and after Halloween is over, they will tear it down, pack it away and set the room up with an equally impressive Christmas train village display. It's all free to visit and the children love it. We get our c***r there and I will be going back soon for more.

We are still planting lettuce so we will have that right up to closing. The tomatoes are slower to ripen now that we have less daylight and less heat. If you purchase them and they are a little pink, be assured that they will ripen up at room temperature in a few days. Summer fruits require organizational skills in autumn. We do not have onions but we still have some shallots. It's too bad we took so long to figure out how to grow them. Some of the bunching onions grew to three feet tall but that was due to not having the time to harvest them. They were turned into compost. Most of the local farms have a labor shortage problem and they solve it in their own way. Sauchuk Farm goes through a service and brings in young men from around the world, for a specific amount of time and he trains them to do each chore, his way. They are always nice, at 7:45 am after picking bags and bags of corn and their English is very good. They will be going home soon and will undoubtedly welcome the warmth instead of our gathering cold.

The kitten report: Wheezie went through her operation just fine and Jay is good about getting her medicine into her with almost no scratches. Goldie is still nursing and Scruffy is hanging around but he is out of luck this time. I suggested we get him 'fixed' but no one could figure out how to catch him on a schedule for a vet appointment. He will probably be a full functioning Tom all his life. Goldie is curious about the outdoors and we are taking her out on supervised excursions. She's never far from the front steps but the tall grass and w**ds are a whole new world for her. I can't wait for her to discover the maple tree in the front yard. She's lost interest in climbing the living room drapes so the next step is for her to learn to climb trees. It's up to Wheezie to teach her that skill along with a host of others. Things are winding down but we're still here.

Stop by and see what we have growing for you,

Jay and Phyllis Sprout

09/27/2026

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

Mashpee Enacts Lawn Fertilizer Regulations by Virginia Scharfenberg | Mar 31, 2015 | Ecological Lawn Care, Waste Water | 0 comments After overwhelming approval at Town Meeting, unanimous approval by the Cape Cod Commission and approval by the Attorney General, the Town of Mashpee has now added lawn....

09/20/2026

Sprout Farm Newsletter Sept. 19, 2026 open 9-5 daily sproutfarm.net
Hello Everyone,
The mornings are getting chilly and the guys at Sauchuk Farm, coming from tropical climates, are wearing three layers of clothes and gloves, just to pick corn. They finish putting the corn in my truck by 8:00 every morning and before the corn maze opens up on weekends, so they're always on the go. The three inches of rain that we had last Sunday made everything look healthy and now we have to mow the lawn, again. I don't think we will see any water restrictions in the near future. I wouldn't pay attention to them anyway because we still have our well.
When I asked Jay if he wanted to say anything to the customers he almost jumped out of his chair, “We have tomatoes. Tell them we have eight 25lb boxes of tomatoes. Each box is $50.00. “ That's a good deal. So, if you want to make tomato sauce, now is the time. We have peppers but no onions, just shallots. The tomatoes are beautiful because they are exclusively grown in the greenhouses and have very little disease or competition with w**ds. Ken takes care of them and that means I haven't even been in those houses for months. We're still picking beans and Ken is still planting and harvesting lettuce. We will be getting fresh cranberries starting Friday but we are unable to get the dried cranberries. I think they made an exception for us for years but now Decas is going by the book or better said the distributor, and we can't make the minimum from some guy on the North shore so I said, well, I won't say what I said but in the end, there will be no dried cranberries from Decas.
We have seven varieties of apples at this time but that is subject to change. We have Bartlett pears next to the Honey Crisp apples. Bulb fennel is back for a little while.
I got used to ignoring the tilther when I walked by it by the house to the point that I forgot it was there. I finally took it for a spin down the walkway for the new cucumber plants and it did an excellent job of getting rid of the small w**ds without kicking up a lot of dirt and damaging the new plants.
The mums are doing well and still selling in the bud stage. At $5.99 for a 9” mum plant you can see why they are popular. The hanging basket mums are only $9.99. There is only one plant per pot but they sure fill up the space. Speaking of space, at the end of last spring, we took one of those empty cedar planters that had been hanging around for years, dumped a bag of soil into it, and dropped in a sad looking hanging basket (without the pot). It took a few weeks for it to adjust to its new container but look at it now. It only had three plants in it but it fills up the space and spills over so that you can't see the planter any more. Now that's keeping life simple.
The swamp milk w**d did its job and now they're almost down to the stem. If the Monarch butterfly caterpillars didn't eat the leaves, the aphids did but now we have Monarch butterflies fluttering around. Some of them will have a short life as their wings did not expand evenly but for those that went through the transition as expected, they're bright and beautiful. I saw one fat caterpillar chomping down the leaves from one of the last healthy plants. They should all come to an end at about the same time.
The kitten report: We are down to two kittens; Smidgit and Goldie or better known as Chunk. James told me to look at Goldie's teeth and sure enough there was a loose tooth, hanging off to the side of the jaw but not causing any problems when it came to eating. Mashpee Vet on Great Neck Road North was great and we were in the office within an hour because they had a cancellation. They pulled the tooth and cleaned out the hole and kept saying how beautiful she was. I was asking when do they recommend kittens get neutered and they said, 'At six months old.' It took me awhile to realize that they were referring to Goldie as a girl, not a boy. I hadn't bother to look closely because the vast majority of orange cats are male so I was shocked to find out we have a girl. That explains why she is so affectionate. She is bright, fluffy and needs a flea treatment. The vet recommends, Revolution rather than the older better known brands that don't seem to work as well as this new one.
That's all the news we have for now. Stop by and see what we have growing for you.

Jay and Phyllis Sprout

09/13/2026

Sprout Farm Newsletter September 12th 2026 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily

Hello Everyone,

The Labor Day is past and the temperatures have dropped. The air conditioner can take a break until next year but now is the time to stack the firewood. The garden chores are easier now that the cool breeze actually works to keep you cool despite the brilliant sunshine. There's something about September skies in New England that makes our shoulder season special. The wild life is more active. Jay looked out the window and saw a coyote crossing and re-crossing the street and I did a quick mental checklist of cats and kittens. All accounted for. Mr. Scruffy is on his own but he's a survivor.

The garden is winding down. There is no more summer squash or zucchini in our garden or at the Big Apple in Wrentham. We do have beans but they go quickly. Sorry, there was no second planting of wax beans. We have tomatoes and this is the time of year that I'm glad they're growing in open sided greenhouses. The bees are plentiful and going in and out without hesitation. The bumble bees are everywhere. I don't see honey bees anywhere but the bumble bees do all the work with tomatoes so that's OK. The peppers and eggplant are doing well and Jay brings in some from The Big Apple to give our plants enough time for the veggies to ripen.

We have have 6 varieties of apples at the moment including Macintosh and Homey crisp. We are waiting for the apples from Sauchuk Farm and they should be available sometime this week. Before you know it we'll be bringing home bins of pumpkins. The supermarket displays of Halloween candy are getting seriously extensive. Candy companies must have serious advertising budgets when it come to candy in October.

Jay started bringing out the mums out of the greenhouses so the last flower season is off and running. Most of them are not in color, yet, but the buds cover the plants perfectly. The earlier you get them settled into the soil, the longer they'll last and you'll enjoy every bloom as it opens. They do needs regular water to perform at their best and garden soil holds that better than a plastic pot.

The mums are hybrids so we do not expect them to come back next year but you never know. If you want to make sure your effort this fall plays out next spring, dig a larger hole for the mum and plant some spring bulbs around the edges. It's the best time of the year to do this and next spring you'll be happy you did. Dig once, plant twice as much.

The kitten report: The kittens are nine weeks old tomorrow. One of them has gone to his new home and the rest of them have gone vertical. They have discovered the dining room table and the table cloth that used to cover it. The kittens are just heavy enough that when they grab the cloth to climb up to the table top, they pull the whole cloth down and any and all things on the cloth scatter all over the place. There will be no table cloth until they leave home, except for Goldie/Chunk, he is shaping up to be a heart breaker. I can see the coming battle of wills; Jay vs kitten. My money is on Jay, after all, he is the one who dispenses the food and underneath the cool exterior, cats are all about food. The kittens have increased in speed to the point that when they runs it sounds like they are three times their size. They have the run of the house but they haven't figured out how to go down the stairs into the basement. They haven't been outside onto the grass either but they're easier to keep track of in the house. A couple of years ago when we had two cats with litters at the same time, we had the whole clowder in the room above our bedroom. That's when we realized just how active kittens are in the middle of the night. We would hear these paws thundering across the ceiling at all hours of the night.

It's much quieter with everyone on the same floor.

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

Jay and Phyllis Sprout

09/07/2026

It is Labor Day and we are taking a DAY OFF! Stop Calling.

08/22/2026

Sprout farm newsletter August 22nd 2026 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily
Hello Everyone,
We've turned another corner into a little summer. That's the time when the Falmouth Road Race is over and the college students leave to get ready to return to classes. Life slows down just a little bit from the hectic July days. Even the public schools are starting before Labor Day and it just seems wrong to look at yellow school buses before the holiday. Sunset on August 31st is around 7:30.
Did we ever make a decision about staying on Daylight savings time? I remember when we tried it back in the late 70's. I lasted just until the little kids were getting on the school buses in total darkness then the parents made their choice loud and clear. Standard time was good for early classes and buses.
Jay is making the trek in early ours of the day to The Big Apple and we now have, in addition to the best peaches in New England, apples. Paula Reds and Gravenstein are the first tart apples to come off the trees. We have some cukes and other staples from the Big Apple. I'm glad they know ow to grow a late summer garden. We find it a challenge. Jay like the garden neat and tidy. Pick a row of beans a couple of time, turn it under and plant something for fall. I take a different approach. Pick the row clean, wait for the new flowers to set and keep picking beans over and over again. There is one raggedy row of beans that we started picking on July 9th and I pulled a 5 gallon bucket of beans out of it this morning. There are still flowers on the plants so I will continue to defend it from the tines of the tractor. Ken is keeping busy picking tomatoes and lettuce. Thank goodness Sandra is keeping up with the flower bouquet. I just don't have the energy to do that chore. More than the energy, I don't have her eye for color and form. The shallots from the garden are finally dried and are on the stand.
The chrysanthemums are starting to crack color so they are coming out of the greenhouses. We have some yellow and bronze/orange coloring up a little earlier than expected. He set the price a $5.99/9” pot. He doesn't want them to linger here. They are looking good with generous and tight branching. We have five or six varieties of perennials that are potted up in the seeding house that are for sale. There is some lupin, delphinium, helianthus, swamp milkw**d,cone flower. We have some work to do on the milkw**d before it is ready for prime time. Here's an article about aphid control on milkw**d. There are some very unusual ideas here. That's just what we need.
https://monarchbutterflygarden.net/control-aphids-milkw**d-plants/
The perennials are staying in the seeding house because the automatic watering system does the job better than we could at this time of year. We thought we would try starting perennials from seed and we are pleasantly surprised to see how many of them did well. Now they have to go into ground and chill out for a winter season, or vernalize, so they will bloom in the spring.
The kitten report: The little explorers are climbing up Jay's legs and he always wears shorts. They have an all consuming interest in shoes and boots; the smellier the better. They sniff them, climb over them, dive into them head first and play with any loose laces. Wheezie is very patient. Here tail never stops swishing so the kittens always have something to pounce on.
We're keeping the gold kitten. He's a chub. They've started climbing the drapes, right on schedule. Kittens climbing drapes is our entertainment and the drapes were a super bargain so we don't worry about them.

The kittens have been moved from our bedroom to the sun room/living room. They hangout in back of a big chair on a soft blanket. They're cute when the sleep and they more cute when they wake up. I have to be careful not to let those moments interfere with chores or driving. Wheezie claims the house her territory and defends it from our other older cats while she is caring for kittens. She takes exception to Cat-a-chino at all times and he's terrified of her. He can go from the kitchen, down the cellar stairs and out the cat door in the basement in less than four seconds. He may be older but she's meaner.
That's all the news for now. Be sure to stop by and see what we have growing for you.
Jay and Phyllis Sprout

08/09/2026

Sprout Farm Newsletter August 8, 2026 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily
Hello Everyone,
Has anyone tried to cook a meal with one of those solar ovens? If there was ever a time for outdoor cooking, it was this week. The temperature is challenging enough but the humidity is truly uncomfortable. Some of the plants are beginning to complain. Our summer squash is diminishing due to powdery mildew or something similar and the new plants are looking pretty small in comparison. Jay says we are getting a few more tomatoes but we're still picking from the greenhouse with the tall tomato plants. We are surprised by the nice growth on these plants as they usually fall prey to disease long before August. I was out scouting for horn worms last night and saw three and picked offs two. When I went to relocate the ladder I surprised a skunk, nothing serious but we both went our separate ways. The wildlife continues to thrive and we keep a bowl of fresh water by the back steps for any stray cat that happens to need a drink.
The last of the veggie plants went into the compost pile this week and the benches were stacked up so we can do a deep cleaning of the front yard. Jay predicts the chrysanthemums will begin to crack color around Sept. 1st. We will bring them out when they show color because it is easier to see the flower than it is to find and read a plant tag. By the time they are on display, the tag is buried somewhere around the base of the plant and pretty much invisible.
Here are some very brief garden suggestions.
'As the gardening to-do list starts to get crossed off, begin to think about next year. Make notes while things are still blooming. Figure out which plants may need to be moved or divided. Also, order spring bulbs. If you’ve had your amaryllis outside, now is the time to bring them in.
Sow lettuce, greens, carrots, beets, and turnips for a second chance crop. Mulch around the root systems to retain water and keep them cool. Keep an eye out for pests and act immediately to eradicate them. Fill in bare spots in the lawn by sowing mixed grass seed.'
Speaking of turnips, we have started to transplant our Eastham turnip seedlings. We wintered over one turnip plant and it grew to over four feet tall before it fell over. We forgot about it as it was totally engulfed in w**ds. When we pulled back the w**ds we saw that the seed heads had matured and that turnip seedlings were covering the ground like a green mat. Fortunately, there was still an abundance of seeds for collecting and now we have seedlings from '25 and '26 growing in the garden. None of our off-Cape farm friends are excited about Eastham turnip so this must be a local thing.
Sauchuk Farm corn has been very popular and I made a second trip today to make sure everyone got corn and no one pulled in a saw that dreaded, “Sorry, Corn Sold Out” sign. Some of you may have purchased white corn for the first time when we were temporally out of the butter and sugar corn. The parking lot was a little crowded at times and I told Rylan to turn down the volume on the driveway alert or it would drive him crazy. It broadcasts into our living room and the farm stand register area when someone enters and exits the parking lot. He said that was a big improvement.
The kitten report: The kittens will be three weeks old tomorrow. They are just getting their sea legs under them. They go forwards and backwards with the same confusion. Any sideways movement is purely accidental. They have been living is a dark room, under a low piece of furniture for so long that any ordinary light draws them out to investigate the world. They don't go far, maybe less than two feet from the desk, before they turn around and stumble back under the desk where they curl up with their litter mates. Mom is calm and quiet unless she is really hungry but we have a routine; if you walk into the room, you feed the cat. She likes that arrangement. We expect she will keep the kittens there for at least another week. We are spoiling her by running the air conditioner all the time to keep her comfortable. When mama's happy, everyone's happy and that includes her five kittens.
That's all the news for now. Stop by and see what we have growing for you,
Jay and Phyllis Sprout

07/26/2026

Sprout Farm Newsletter July 25, 2026 sproutfarm.net open 9-5 daily
Hello Everyone,
We've turned the corner and mid summer is just around the corner. I think I saw the first Halloween candy display going up in a supermarket off Cape. This is a sugar conspiracy, I'm sure of it. They can't sell candy and decorations for Labor day so they just skip it and move onto the next holiday.
Now for a better diet, you've come to the right place. The first flush of summer is over, that means we are between the tomato house and High tunnel #1. Translation: we don't have many tomatoes right now because we are waiting for those in the high tunnel to ripen up. We hope the zucchini and summer squash hold up until the second planting starts to produce and Jay spends a lot of time hunting for cukes. I get home from the corn run, grab a bucket and head out to pick beans. Life is very predictable around here. The corn is grown in Plympton, just west of Plymouth. August is coming and we heard from The Big Apple that the peach crop is bountiful. So, someone is going to be getting up nice and early to go to Wrentham pretty soon. There are too many crops to list them all but we sure you'll find something tasty, especially if you stop by in the morning.
Flowers-cut. Our first planting of sunflowers has been cut and are resting in the cooler. From what I see, this will be the best planting of the year so if you have a thing about sunflowers, now is the time to indulge yourself. Sandra is doing a remarkable job pulling bouquets together. The plants are healthy, we just have to be patient on some of them, like asters that have this internal clock that says, “We will bloom when autumn is near.” Thanks. We will do fine.
I have an update on the tomato horn worm saga. The black light flashlight arrived and last week I waited until dark and went out to the tomato house. That's the one where the plants grow up 8-10 feet tall. The horn worms like to start feasting at the tender tips on the top of the plants and work their way down. The ladder was in the center of the row and it was easy to climb up and search for worms, find them, pry them off the branch, put them in a bag. Climb down the ladder, move it four feet and repeat the drill. The black light made the foliage look reddish-purple and the worms stood out as bright turquoise. I couldn't believe the contrast! I could have searched for hours, which I did, and I would not have seen a single one of those worms in bright daylight. At night, with a black light flashlight, those worms glowed and were were toast. There is something deeply troubling about pulling those worms off their branch. They cling, stubbornly, and feel dry and squishy and just icky. Lesson #1, wear gloves to separate you from the worm. It helps somewhat but it is still icky. That first hunt yielded around two dozen huge worms. It was sad to get up close to see the damage they had done. It was good to see the black light showed up tiny worms as well as their big brothers. I went out a week later and did the same drill and only found three worms so that's a big improvement without chemicals.
The kitten report: We have kittens! Rather Wheezie has five new kittens and one is orange. James is happy to finally have an orange kitten. She had them last Sunday under our bed, as usual. So far all has been quiet. She gets us up at 4:55 am just to make sure we keep a strict schedule. She gets fed first, then Jay feed the rest of the clowder or whoever shows up, then I just get up slowly and feed her again. Everyone is on KP duty and she is not shy about letting us know when it is chow time. I will remember their birthday if I call one of them FIFA because they were born on the final day of the World Cup. Four of the kittens are black, gray, white, striped and blotched. I think the kitten list is finished at this time. We just have to keep everyone healthy so they can go to good homes. Chino, our tuxedo cat, showed up tonight for the first time in many weeks. I don't know where he's been but he is hungry and deeply suspicious of the other cats. He's in my face and in front of my screen. I expect to hear fur fly and Chino head for the door as soon as Wheezie catches sight of him. If he's smart, he will lay low and get breakfast tomorrow morning like a proper cat.
That's all the news for now. Stop by and see what we have growing for you,
Jay and Phyllis Sprout