Vegetables

We sell a wide variety of vegetables at Magicland Farms: sweet corn, green and yellow beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet and hot peppers, freshly hand dug sand grown red potatoes, watermelons, summer and winter squash, pumpkins (all sizes including miniature and giant over 100 pounds), decorative Indian corn, and peas - just to name a few!

For more information on each of our vegetables, click the links at the right.

Sweet Corn

We start picking our sweet corn in July. Some years we have started picking our first patch of sweet corn on July 5, other years the first corn wasn’t ready for picking until July 24. Our average date for picking the first corn is July 13. While the main reason for this wide range of first picking dates is the weather in May and June, other reasons include date of planting and the particular sweet corn variety. The primary problem with super-early varieties is ear size, so we are hesitant with planting them. However, we do plant second-early corn. Most likely the year we had sweet corn ready for the weekend of the 4th of July was that the May and June temperatures averaged well above normal, we planted the corn earlier than normal and we chose an xtra-early variety.

In 2010 we are not only putting out a new website, but the brilliant software engineer, Matthew Fox (with a little help from his papa), has created a revolutionary software program that estimates the first picking date for not only our first patch of corn, but every other patch of corn we plant as well! Since we normally plant at least 35 different patches, that’s saying a lot! Also, we plan on keeping our customers informed on what the computer estimates will be the first day we will start selling sweet corn. The link to this date is: WHEN SWEET CORN WILL START THIS YEAR. This date will be updated at least once a week, perhaps sometimes even daily. Last year we tested out an early version of this software and it performed better than expected! This software’s primary purpose is to help us plant our patches of sweet corn so there is a continuous supply from July until October 10 (or first frost). We call this software “Sweet Corn Scheduler” and we will soon be marketing it through our website. The software’s target audience is those who grow from one to a thousand acres of sweet corn.

While one of our goals throughout Magicland Farms is freshness, we carry this to extreme with sweet corn. Most of our corn is sold within 6 hours of picking—many times this time is reduced to an hour. We try to pick most of our corn before we open at 10AM. (Sweet Corn fields are no place to be in on sunny, summer afternoons unless you happen to have a sprinkler hitting you in your face! Trust me here.) When we have picked an over abundance of corn one day, the next day we move it from our big new corn bin inside and put it in our old corn bin sitting outside. We then sell it as Day Old corn at substantial discounts that approach half-price. This Day Old corn is several days fresher than corn in supermarkets and is normally sold at prices below supermarket sales prices.

In 2009 we test planted the Mirai type of sweet corn which has some super-sweet genes bred into it. Mirai also has some regular sweet corn genes in it which are, no doubt, responsible for its great flavor. It also is exceptionally tender and creamy textured. Believe it or not, while all the customers we contacted enjoyed it, some felt it was too sweet! Our test planting was a success and while last year we only planted bi-color Mirai, this year we will be planting all yellow and all white Mirai as well. Since Mirai can’t be planted in cold soils, it won’t be normally ready before late July at the earliest. This is about two weeks later than our first corn.

For a little history of sweet corn... read more

Beans

We grow green, yellow, and some French Filet beans. Our sales of beans have really taken off the past 10 years. There are three reasons for this:

1. Freshness
2. Picked while tender
3. Varieties

Nearly all our beans are sold within 24 hours of picking. Day old beans, which are usually in low supply, are sold for half-price. In addition, we refuse to pick beans if they are too mature. We actually test them right out in the field before we commit to picking them! Since we normally plant 7 to 10 patches of beans, we can do this and still have a continuous supply of tender and tasty beans from July 1 to frost. Perhaps the most important reason why our beans are in such high demand are the superior varieties we grow. Actually, most of our green beans are a single variety. What is the name of this bean? When a customer asks my wife at our market what variety of beans we grow since they taste so unbelievably yummy, she usually replies, “If I told you, I’d have to shoot you!” The customer normally laughs. (PS: As far as I know she never told anybody the bean varieties we grow since she hasn’t shot anyone yet!)

One further note: bean varieties grown in supermarkets are of a “special” type. They are called “shipping” beans which means they are specially bred to look OK after at least a week after picking. In order to do this, they are bred to be tougher than farm market or processing beans. Don’t waste your time and money trying to freeze or can these supermarket beans. If you don’t freeze or can our beans, or other beans bred specifically for home gardens or farm markets, you’d be better off buying Birds’ Eye or Green Giant frozen beans in the store!

Tomatoes

Like sweet corn, we grow a wide variety of tomatoes. Our tomato season usually starts in early July when we start picking our delicious Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes that we grow in our high tunnel. By the way, a high tunnel is simply an unheated greenhouse where you plant directly in the ground. In addition to getting tomatoes ripe earlier than when planted outdoors, it provides protection from disease, insects and other problems. One difference between a high tunnel and a typical unheated greenhouses is that on a sunny day you open up the sides of the high tunnel all the way so it doesn’t get too hot inside.

Shortly after we start picking Sun Sugar in the high tunnels, we start picking our Little Red tomatoes. These tomatoes we raise outside on plastic mulch and they are a very special super-early variety that are especially tasty. While, as their name suggests, they are small, they are much bigger than cherry tomatoes sometimes getting as large as quarter of a pound each. They can be sliced in half, or even fourths, and put on a hamburger to give it that special luscious taste.. However, you will likely need two of the Little Red tomatoes to really get the tomato taste in every bite!

About a week after the Little Red tomatoes start, our large red tomatoes, that we grow in the high tunnel, begin to ripen. These tomatoes are Mountain Spring and/or Mountain Glory. While Mountain Spring is a widely grown commercial variety that is grown in Michigan, most commercial growers pick them at the mature green(still all green) to breaker(a touch of pink at the blossom end) stage of maturity. We pick them from when they are nearly all red to the fully ripe stage. There is quite a difference in flavor here.

Shortly after we start picking our high tunnel Mountain Spring tomatoes, our field grown tomatoes start ripening. Since we grow over 20 types of tomatoes, including many Heirloom varieties, we won’t mention all the varieties. However, several are noteworthy. Two of our favorite large red tomatoes are Big Beef and Mountain Fresh. These two large red varieties are the main types we have in the large trays we have outside. Both are excellent eating.

Some of our favorite Heirloom tomatoes include Mortgage Lifter (looks a bit like Brandywine), Green Zebra, Persimmon, Aunt Gertie’s Gold, Pink Beauty, Cherokee Purple and others. This year we are again trying new Heirloom varieties. All Heirloom varieties are labeled so you know what you are getting. The price of our Heirlooms are the same as our standard red tomatoes so all you need do is drop them all in the bag before they are weighed. It's real simple!

We also grow tomatoes for canning. Since most customers use the hot water bath method of canning, for safety reasons. Tomatoes must have enough acid to inhibit growth of the botulism organism which is really bad unless you are into botox treatments! Acidity is measured by pH. In order for tomatoes to be safely canned they MUST have a pH below 4.5. Happily, we tested our tomatoes and they average 3.8, which is well within the guidelines. However, there are popular tomato varieties that are sold at other markets(Jetstar is one) which are non-acid and should not be canned using the hot water bath. WE DO NOT GROW RED LOW ACID TOMATOES! If you have a question about your own tomatoes from your own garden, or from another source other than Magicland Farms, stop by and we will give you a free pH test strip to make sure you will be able to safely can your tomatoes with a hot water bath.

In addition to standard canning tomatoes we also grow paste tomatoes. A common generic name for these tomatoes is Roma. They are also called Italian plum tomatoes and sauce tomatoes. Whatever you call them we understand what you are talking about. While these tomatoes can be canned whole, they are normally put through a food mill that takes out the seeds and skin and leaves the sauce. We at Magicland Farms can and freeze 5 to 8 bushels of these paste tomatoes each year for our own use. They seem to have increased in popularity the past few years so we are planting more of them this year. The primary variety we now grow is the Super Marzano. It not only is larger than the original Roma, it is of better quality. It also has less water so the sauce is thicker as it comes out of the food mill. Since it is larger, not as much work is required to pick a half bushel and we can now sell them at the same price as our other canning tomatoes.

Potatoes

We specialize in sand-grown, hand harvested, new red potatoes.

Why do you mention that your potatoes are sand grown?

Well they taste and look better. They also are easier to clean and often there is no need to peel them even after storage. Keep in mind when we say “sand grown” we don’t mean pure sand. We mean loamy sand or sandy loam. No muck or clay!

How about hand harvested? What’s wrong with machine harvested potatoes?

First, we only hand dig our early potatoes. Starting in late July, we usually get out our special single-bottom plow and go down a row, or sometimes just half row, and turn up the soil so many of the potatoes are either sitting on the ground or just below the surface. We then hand pick them up—no bruises. Medical research has shown that pregnant women shouldn’t eat potatoes that have been harvested by machines because they get bruised. (Some doctors, to make life simple, tell their pregnant patients to not eat potatoes because of this. The problem isn’t the potatoes; its how the potatoes have been treated from just before harvest to when the customer purchases them. ) Question: If pregnant women shouldn’t eat bruised potatoes how about kids or even older men? I think that’s a good question. By the way, many growers in New England harvest their potatoes similar to the way we do it. In fact, we got the idea from these folks in the Northeast!

What are new potatoes and what’s so special about them?

New potatoes are simply potatoes dug before the foliage dies. We start digging our red Norland potatoes, our earliest, around July 1 and the tops of Norland start dying around August 1. Norland are new potatoes during July but are semi-new during August. Toward the end of July we start digging our red LaSoda potatoes and they become our new red potatoes during August. After Labor Day we are done digging new potatoes since the tops are dead. However, we then go into our storage potatoes with tougher skin. Truly new potatoes shouldn’t be peeled—you should eat skin and all. Since our potatoes are sand grown and hand harvested, there is really seldom a need to peel any of our potatoes—simply scrub them with a good vegetable brush.

Do you only grow red potatoes?

No! We also grow the yellow fleshed Yukon Gold, Norkotah Russet and the large, white “Maine” potato--Kennebec.