JULY AT LEWIS CREEK FARM

Now we have real summer! Hot weather. Humid weather. Dry weather. Thunderstorms. July has the first reliable haymaking weather, and in the old days they would often wait until July to make their first cut of hay because they could depend on the weather. If it’s a dry year we will certainly be irrigating in July. Many of the crops are now full sized and every week we have new crops ripening. Squash, beets, beans, cucumbers, and new potatoes all make their first appearance in July. Towards the end of the month, about the 20th, we’ll get some tomatoes, and if we’re lucky, and it’s a warm year we’ll see the

Irrigating in July. If it's going to be dry, it will be dry in July.

first sweet corn for the last weekend of the month. Some people have sweet corn earlier than we do. Some because they’re in warmer areas of the state, and some because they use plastic over the crop in the spring. The plastic acts like a little greenhouse, warming the soil and the plants and giving it a head start in a cool spring. To me, the problem with that technique is that the plastic has to be thrown out after one use. That’s a lot of trash. Personally I don’t like using either plastic mulch or plastic row covers. I’ve tried them, and they work well for many crops, but it just seems like too much waste. It surprises some people to find out that we are still planting crops in July. Many of the fall crops are not planted until July, and some of them are not planted until August. July is a busy month. We’re still planting crops, we’re still fighting weeds, we’re probably irrigating and we’re starting to have a lot of crops to harvest. We have a big crew to keep up with it all, often as many as a dozen people.
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