I’m home from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference, and I had a great time. There were 1200 attendees and this was their 30th anniversary! I gave two workshops: Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables and Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests, which I updated and you can view here:
I attended three good workshops by Steve Moore (High Tunnels/hoophouses), Ellen Polishuk (Coaxing more profit from your farm) and Laura Lengnick (Resilient Agriculture). It’s nice to have enough time at an event to attend other farmers’ workshops.
The November/December Growing for Market magazine is out. This double issue has 28 pages, with my article on succession planting in the winter hoophouse, and other articles on ginger, farm finances, and diseases in the winter flower greenhouse.
Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference
Lexington Convention Center ~ Lexington, Kentucky
You can see the full conference program with session descriptions at: http://www.ssawg.org/2016-conference-program
Pre-Conference Courses and Field Trips: January 27-28, 2016
General Conference: January 29-30, 2016
Visit www.ssawg.org for complete details
My workshop:
Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale
Friday, January 29, 9:45 – 11:00
I’ll also be signing books on Thursday evening January 28, 7-8.30pm
Photo by Lori Katz
Hello, I came across your blog while searching for reviews for the Checchi and Magli SP100 potato digger. I found your Nov 15, 2013 posting with a picture of the potato digger in action but couldn’t find any follow up entries about it. I’m considering purchasing one of the machines to harvest potatoes and dahlia tubers. Could you share with me your experiences regarding the use of the machine? Thank you, Steve
We like the SP100. We’ve only used it for potatoes so far. We found that for our June-planted crop, which we mulch with hay, we have to remove the mulch first. We bush-hog two weeks before the planned harvest date, to let the haulms and weeds die, then we pull off the mulch. This does take time, but according to research I did (I mean asking other growers!) other potato diggers don’t like lots of fibrous material either, so removing mulch is unavoidable. And we really like using mulch to moderate the soil moisture and temperature of the summer-planted crop here in Virginia. We do not mulch our March-planted crop. We mow that two weeks before planned harvest, then if it’s weedy again, the day before harvest. The mowing allows the potato skins to form up before we dig. The Sp100 is a compact little machine, doesn’t need a lot of storage space.