Farm Fresh Goodness Throughout The Season
Although we made our reputation on melons, we never leave good enough alone. Today we feature some 20 different crop families with over 140 varieties! We also plant at staggered intervals so we’ll have crops coming into season for longer periods. You can always be assured that the freshest produce is at Hand Melon Farm.
Healthy Fields. Healthy Crops
We take great pride in our ecologically sensitive approach to farming, and seek to strike a balance between producing healthy food and preserving the environment. Toward that end we employ proven techniques such as crop rotation, reduced tillage, mulching, Integrated Pest Management, and even raising our own winter rye for straw mulch on our strawberry plants.
Look for the Bright Red Hand
Find Hand Melon Farm produce at our own Farm Market located on Route 29, and our Pick-Your-Own fields along Wilbur Avenue. We also have farm stands, and are carried in fine grocers.
Be sure to follow us on Facebook for the latest news about the crops and their readiness. Also be sure to sign up for our email newsletter so you know when to come out for a pick-your-own visit, or to pick up some famous Hand Melons at our Farm Market!
Our Crops
Asparagus
This is the first crop that we harvest starting in early May. It’s truly spring when you can serve bright asparagus fresh from the field! Find our farm-fresh spring asparagus at our Farm Stand .
We planted ½ acre in 2011, then in 2012 we picked them for 2 weeks, in 2013 the season lengthened by 2 weeks, for a four-week picking season. And every year after as the plants got stronger and better established, the plants produced for an extended period until we can offer asparagus for nearly 2 months, Mother Nature dependent. Our biggest challenge is weeding between the delicate stalks. They are watered with overhead sprinklers for minimal disruption.
Beans
We plant a beautiful dark green, slender variety of bean that our customers prefer. The beans must be planted every week, so we end up with some 10 to 12 plantings so that we can offer beans from early July to the end of September. Our fresh green beans are available at our Farm Stand and our other retail locations.
Green beans are very intense to harvest, because they require hand-picking at just the right ripeness. Each planting can only be harvested for a week to ten days before they get too big, and are no longer desirable in the kitchen. In total we have about ¾ of an acre of beans and they are watered with overhead sprinklers.
Blueberries
Our patches are some of the most well kept in the area, with installed netting over one patch, and plans to install netting over our other patch. Netting keeps the birds out of the ripening fruit, allowing the berries to attain full sweetness, given you a quality better tasting blueberry.
We offer 4 different varieties in our covered patch, ripening early July and going well into August. Mostly sold at our Farm Stand and to wholesale customers, but we also have Pick Your Own.
The health benefits of blueberries are widely touted. Blueberries are now considered a superfood, known to have the highest levels of antioxidants, lots of vitamin C, and plenty of fiber – all in a delicious, low-calorie package.
We use an ecologically friendly mesh screen system to keep birds from our blueberries
We’ve recently put in another acre with seven varieties, which will be ready in a few years. We mulch our plants heavily with woodchips, to help control weeds and allow the shallow roots of the blueberry plants to absorb water and nutrients. Our blueberries are irrigated with a trickle system at the root level to keep the leaves dry.
Pruning is critical in March and April, during the plants’ dormancy, so the cuts can heal. The pruning promotes vigorous growth, whereas older, woody growth is less productive.
Cucumbers and Pickles
We grow nearly an acre of cucumbers, totaling some 4000 cucumber plants of a variety that we believe performs the best in our terrain. Cucumbers and pickles are very intensive crops because they don’t produce for a long time, requiring us to plant eight different plantings beginning around April 27 and usually going to July 10th. We only pick a given patch of cucumbers for 2-3 weeks, so we try to stage them in order to have a steady supply all summer long. They are picked every day to ensure optimal ripeness and crispy freshness.
We raise about the same amount of pickling cucumber plants, and offer two sizes: extra small for gherkin-sized pickles, and a slightly larger size, dill pickle size. Offered by the half-bushel box for making pickles.
It’s important to remember that pickles are a hot weather crop and perform best in July and August, and are one of the first crops for canning. By September their season is closing when most people think about harvesting and putting up crops like tomatoes and peppers. So if you’re planning on pickling, come out to our Farm Stand in mid summer!
Find our cucumbers and pickling cucumbers at our Farm Stand, and our other retail locations.
Eggplant
We grow 2 different varieties of eggplant, including the most popular “Classic” They are over 5,000 plants, planted April 15 grown on raised beds with irrigation and black plastic – two rows of plants to one row of plastic – between the rows for weed and moisture control . About ½ acre. Most of the crop goes to our wholesalers, but eggplants are very popular as a Pick Your Own crop in September, and naturally, we carry them at our Farm Market on route 29, across from the Washington County Fairgrounds, in Greenwich, NY.
Fall Squash
We grow a number of beautiful varieties of fall squash: Butternut, buttercup (Kabocha), acorn squash, Blue Hubbard, (a huge squash that stores well and provides lots of meat), spaghetti squash, delicata, and sweet dumpling. Started in late May in the greenhouse and transferred to the field 3 weeks later, our squash are grown using plastic mulch and trickle irrigation. They ripen in early September, and are popular with Pick Your Own crowd because they store well in cool places like cellars.
Squash are revered the world over for their high nutritional content, ease of growing, and ease of storage. Their meaty flesh can be prepared in dozens of interesting ways. Come on out this fall and pick a bushel to last through the winter! You can also find our fall squash at our Farm Stand.
Gourds
One of our favorite crops because they are whimsical, colorful, and just plain fun at the end of a long season! We’re always delighted to find unusual and unexpected-shaped gourds hiding beneath their protective cover of foliage–just waiting to be discovered in the fall. We grow fall gourds such as speckled swans, winged gourds, that have weird shapes beautiful colors, and some oversized gourds that are 12-14” inches tall and 4-6 inches in diameter.
Herbs & Cut Flowers
We offer a huge seasonal selection of fresh herbs and flowers at our Farm Stand. Most herbs are available live in 4” pots for you to grow your own. We also have larger, assorted herb pots, to keep outside your kitchen door, for a fresh-picked zest to any meal! We also plan to offer small packages, both fresh and dried.
Our farm field fresh cut flowers are sold by the stem as well as in bright and beautiful bouquets to bring a splash of summer indoors.
Peppers
We grow four varieties of large Bell Peppers. As they ripen, they turn from green to red if left on the stem long enough. We also grow some hot peppers such as Habanero, jalapeno, hot cherries, poblanos and Anaheims. The hot peppers are very popular with the pick your own crowd in September. Look for all our peppers at our Farm Stand, our other retail locations, or come out to the farm and Pick Your Own for canning
We plant two different plantings of peppers about April 10 and May 15. The are grown in our vegetable fields in raised beds with irrigation, total acreage is ½ acre with about 3,500 plants.
Fall Ornamentals
One of our most exciting offerings! We enjoy this crop immensely; all of the fall colors and the different varieties – it’s truly a reward at the end of a long growing season. And we’ve gone out of our way to find the most interesting and unusual varieties. These are mostly used for ornamentals, but most are edible and quite delicious and nutritious. They are also less perishable, and so easier to harvest and keep.
We’re growing the most diverse selection of pumpkins and fall ornamental gourds and squash that we can, offering some 25 different varieties of fall ornamentals! These include Turkish turbans, speckled swans, Long Island Cheese (claimed to make the best pumpkin pie), green striped and tri-colored cushaw, flat white boers, peanut pumpkins, Casperita, American tondo, and many more.
It’s a huge challenge to keep track of all these crops. Grown in raised beds with trickle irrigation to water only the roots, and keep the foliage dry. It’s always fun to go out into the fields in late August and browse around under the massive leaves to discover the pumpkins, squash and gourds hiding under their protective canopy!
Pumpkins
We’ve been experimenting with pumpkin varieties, concentrating on the large 25 to 50 pound pumpkins. Plus we grow many medium pumpkins and small pumpkins, known as pie pumpkins in the industry. We also grow white pumpkins, including a Polar Bear variety that can reach 18-20’ in diameter, and 30-40 lbs. they make a great display grouped with other white pumpkins or in a mixed group of orange pumpkins.
We sell many of our pumpkins and fall ornamentals to large wholesale accounts across the Capital Region such as Sunnyside Nursery in Saratoga Springs, and Toadflax Nursery in South Glens Falls. And we also offer them at our Farm Stands, and our other retail locations.
They are planted in the middle of May in our greenhouse, and then get moved to the fields three weeks later. They don’t require covers with their later planting date.
Raspberries
Our raspberries, a hardy variety called Heritage, ripen in late August and continue through September until we get a hard freeze – which can be as late as mid-October. We have two patches–each about an acre–which provide fruit for our Farm Market. Raspberries are a late-season favorite for the folks who love to Pick Your Own.
Our fall raspberries fruit on new canes every year, so they are more productive than summer raspberries. We prune them each spring, rototill the edges of the rows to keep them from getting too thick, fertilize them, and water them with a sprinkler system to keep them hydrated and provide succulent fruit.
Strawberries
We plant ten varieties of strawberries, and you’ll see them labeled if you come out and Pick Your Own in our strawberry patch. With our different varieties, we enjoy a staggered fruition, which means that we have a longer strawberry season. Each variety bears fruit for perhaps a week or ten days most. But as one variety is falling off, another is just coming into ripeness. Strawberry season begins around the 10th of June, and continues until the beginning of July.
To keep our strawberry plants hardy and healthy, we pluck the blossoms off the new plants so they grow vigorously in their first year, dedicating their energy to plant growth rather than fruit. Then they are allowed to bear fruit in their second year, which is almost always the best and most productive year for a strawberry plant. The plants are allowed to be productive for a total of three years, before we plow them under. This is to ensure that that we offer only the youngest, most productive plants in the fields.
After all their hard work, our plants are rewarded with a winter nap. They get covered with at least half a foot of rye straw mulch after Thanksgiving. We grow our own, some 15 acres of rye, to bury all our strawberry rows in a protective blanket. It’s a two-tractors, two-man operation to get them all covered by early December.
Our strawberries are mulched in season with black plastic sheeting to keep weeds down and retain water in the soil. The plants are watered with sprinklers which also protects the plants during the late frosts of May, and can result in many sleepless nights as we must water the plants if the temperature dips below 32 degrees
Our Strawberries are available at our Farm Stand, our other retail locations, and are one of our most popular Pick Your Own crops. Strawberry picking is a favorite family outing for folks from near and far. Don’t forget to pick up some fresh biscuits at our Farm Stand to make a fresh strawberry shortcake, truly a perfect summer desert!
Summer Squash
Started in our greenhouse on May first, Zucchini and Yellow Squash we grow about ½ an acre totaling about 2000 plants. We utilize raised beds, trickle irrigation, and plastic mulch to minimize both water use and herbicides.
We do four different plantings so we can offer you fresh zucchini and squash from early July through the end of September.
They are harvested every day to maintain perfect size. In hot weather we often have to harvest twice a day! They are sold at our Farm Stands and our other retail locations.
Sweet Corn
We grow the bi-color varieties of sweet corn with yellow and white kernels, known widely as butter and sugar. We have taste tested and chosen a select number of varieties of sweet corn that we feel perform best in our location and soil condition. Try some yourself, and you’ll see why!
Sweet Corn All Summer Long!
We plant every five to ten days depending on the season, often sowing three or four different varieties in one planting. This results in some 70 different plantings of corn to ensure a long harvest season and a steady supply of sweet corn throughout the summer.
From our 70 acres of corn, with an extensive irrigation system, we offer ten different varieties, planted as early as the soil can be worked, with the first few plantings under plastic to protect them from unpredictable spring weather. We only pick a given patch of corn for three-to-four days in order to keep it at peak ripeness.
Our sweet corn is sold throughout the region through wholesale, at our Farm Stands, and we wholesale to many local farm stands.
Tomatoes
We offer six or seven varieties of large round, globe tomatoes, perfect for thick slabs on burgers and sandwiches. We also increasingly grow smaller varieties, such as Roma or Plum, which are very popular with the Pick Your Own crowd, for sauces and canning. Other varieties that we offer include black cherry tomatoes, Sun Gold yellow tomatoes, which are thought to be some of the best tasting little tomatoes, red grape tomatoes, and tomatillos.
We offer several varieties of tomatoes, including Romas–perfect for canning– sold fresh or Pick Your Own
We start our tomatoes in our greenhouse by the first of April for their first 6 weeks. We plant 6 different plantings so that we can get them as early as mid-July through September. They are grown in raised beds with trickle irrigation, which is less wasteful and more efficient. Because of the weight of the fruit, we use wooden stakes and string trellis systems to support the vines and fruit as they ripen and grow larger.
We dedicate nearly 2.5 acres to tomatoes, totaling over 7000 plants. Tomatoes are available at our Farm Market, our other retail locations, and are one of most popular Pick Your Own crops. What will you create with a bushel of fresh-from-the-farm tomatoes? The possibilities are endless!
Watermelons
Because of the growing consumer preference, we only grow seedless watermelons that are round in shape. They grow to about 15 pounds, and exhibit a rich red seedless flesh. Recently we’ve also enjoyed great success with yellow watermelons, which are novel in appearance, yet maintain a delicious authentic watermelon taste.
We grow around 1,000 watermelon plants in raised beds with trickle irrigation to water only the roots. They are started in the greenhouse around the first of May, and they are a little difficult because they are notoriously fickle seeds, so we place them in the warmest section of the greenhouse. Then in about three weeks, they’re transplanted into the field with a protective cover for early spring weather.
Seedless watermelons are somewhat quirky in that they are a sterile plant, not producing any pollen. So we must plant another type of watermelon which produces lots of male flowers so that the honey bees then pollinate our seedless, sterile plants so that they can produce fruit. It is very difficult to determine perfect ripeness for harvesting so we check this crop especially carefully. Find our delicious red or yellow seedless watermelons at our Farm Stand, and our other retail locations.