Category: Book reviews

Book Review The Ecological Farm by Helen Atthowe

Front cover of The Ecological Farm

 The Ecological Farm: A Minimalist No-Till, No-Spray, Selective Weeding, Grow-Your-Own-Fertilizer System of Organic Agriculture, Helen Atthowe, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2023. 368 pages, $44.95.

 In this inspiring book, Helen Atthowe explains her 35 years of experience farming fruit and vegetables in Montana, California and Oregon. This book will appeal to all those (especially orchardists) who are fine-tuning their land management. I think beginners could find it over-whelming, unless they take it in rich small doses! This is definitely a book to dip into and come back to as needed. It provides a Big Picture of ecological farming, not a step-by-step How To.

Helen clearly pays exquisite attention to her farming, conducts research and share her knowledge with others. She operated an Organic orchard in California, together with her husband Carl Rosato, who very sadly died in a farm accident in 2019. Helen and Carl together pioneered ways to raise tree fruit with no pesticides at all. Helen has expertise in ecological weed, disease and pest management, minimal soil disturbance, and managing living mulches, providing soil fertility without manure-based compost, and cultivating habitat for beneficial species. There is lots to learn from this book.

The endorsements for The Ecological Farm are staggering: fifteen well-known ecological farmers (fourteen men and one woman, what’s with that?). Clearly, this work is held in high regard by many experts in the field. The love of farming goes beyond achieving high crop yields, embracing connection with the land and all its forms of life. Helen says “The process of creating farms and gardens opens my eyes to awe, attunes my ears to listening, and offers the gifts of curiosity, discovery and deep connection.”

The ecological approach in this book goes beyond organic, which in the wrong hands simply substitutes a different set of substances for the banned ones, and doesn’t look any deeper. Helen has measured the effects that her actions have had on her land and crops, and shares her results so that we too can grow nutrient-dense foods and leave the environment in a richer, more balanced state than we found it.

The book contains dozens of Helen’s own beautiful full-color photos of plants, pests, birds, fruit trees and vegetables in various combinations. There are prepared forms for monitoring problems and planning interventions. There is a Vegetable Crop Growing and Troubleshooting Guide, a section on Vegetable Crop Insect Pests and Interventions, one on vegetable crop diseases, and similar sections for tree fruit crops.

The first half of the book sets out ten empirical and practical Principles for Managing Ecological Relationships. As the name emphasizes, it’s about managing relationships, not managing crops for highest yields, regardless of what else happens. The connections that form healthy farming ecosystems require us to pay attention, and avoid outside inputs in favor of balancing what is happening on our own farm. There are some excellent charts of applying the ecological principles.

The Principles include creating above- and below-ground diversity; minimizing soil disturbance; maintaining growing roots year-round (living plants secrete 30-60% of the carbon they capture from the air during photosynthesis down into the soil); growing your own carbon; adding organic residues all season; focusing on carbon fertilizers; recycling rather than importing nutrients; fertilizing selectively; weeding selectively; and creating beneficial habitat as close to the crops as possible.

There are many ways to build soil organic matter without removing large quantities of inputs from someone else’s land (not sustainable or fair, as Helen remarks); many ways to build habitat for beneficial organisms; many actions that can steer plants, animals and fungi towards better balance, so that the soil microbial community will thrive and cycle nutrients continuously.

Helen tells that when she started farming, she behaved like a “nitrogen hoarder”, focused on maximizing the amount of nitrogen the soil had available, and topping it up with compost and cover crops if the soil held less than the requirement for the next crop. Her soil management went through a three-stage evolution: She started to view the abundance and diversity of active microbes as the important bit, and the nitrogen level as merely a sign of that activity. Next, she moved to consider the whole soil organic matter system, rather than the parts as separate features to measure. Thirdly, she researched soil carbon and realized that microbially-active carbon was essential fuel for the soil microbes, and deserved more attention.

Actual measurements showed that, contrary to careful calculations, her soil levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were becoming too high. Helen had been generously adding sheep manure and clover compost at 7-10 tons/acre (18-25 tons/ha). She changed to using mown clover as her main fertilizer, and learned to manage the carbon:nitrogen ratio, with the goal of achieving steady decomposition of organic residues and increased microbe populations and diversity. Simply adding more high-nitrogen material will not provide good crops! We need to build carbon in our soils, and optimize organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling.

Helen discovered that the C:N ratio of mowed clover living mulch residue varied according to the time of year, being highest (least nitrogen, nodules not yet formed) in July and lowest (most nitrogen, clover flowering) in August and September. This affects nutrient availability and decomposition rate. Vegetable crops do best in Helen’s system if she tills once a year and regularly applies both high-C and low-C residues on the surface. The continuous organic surface residue supply is much better than an annual large dose. Timing when and how we apply organic residues influences their C:N ratio, and hence how we build up carbon in the soil.

Minimizing tillage is another way to build soil organic matter. Incorporated clover releases nitrate-nitrogen into the soil much more quickly than surface-applied cut clover. If your soil has an active and diverse microbial community, incorporating legume cover crops in spring can give a quick burst of nitrogen (for a few weeks), then a sustained regular release of more as it slowly decomposes. With no tillage there is a lag time. No-till does keep the fungal food webs unbroken, which has advantages. It is important to focus on the carbon fertilizers rather than fast-release nitrogen fertilizers. Since 2016, Helen has used only mowed living mulch as fertilizer for most crops, paying close attention to the timing of mowing. The vegetable plots also benefitted from the living mulch in the row middles growing over the bed after the food crop was finished.

I had to look up “row middles” to understand the methods better. With rows of fruit trees, row middles are the aisles between rows of trees. They can be planted in cover crops, which can be mowed and the cut material blown into the tree rows to act as mulch. The photos of vegetable production (other than her home garden) seem to show aisles wider than the beds, so that less than half of the land is in vegetables and more than half is in cover crops. This fits with the method of growing lots of cover crops as the main source of soil fertility. And with Helen’s method of always leaving half of the living mulch row middles unmowed to provide good habitat for beneficial insects. Over here on the East Coast, I am more used to intensive vegetable farms with narrow aisles between beds, perhaps because land is more expensive, perhaps because Bermuda grass is so invasive as to scare off anyone who might consider permanent paths. Jennie Love, a flower farmer in Philadelphia, uses Living Walkways. Hers are 21″ wide, mostly grass and weeds, and require mowing every single week. Helen’s are more focused on legumes, especially clovers.

To focus on a soil organic matter system driven by microbial activity, attention goes to C:N ratios, optimal decomposition speed and nutrient cycling of the cover crops, mulches and composts. As Helen admits, this can be overwhelming, so don’t change everything at once! As you gain experience growing your own fertilizers, you can cut back on imported fertilizers. Do provide a diversity of organic materials throughout the growing season. Having just one kind, all at once is, for the soil, like us eating a whole giant cheese pizza! Soil “indigestion” takes the form of an over-population of just a limited specific microbial community.

Decreasing nutrient inputs and increasing application of organic residues leads to an increase of mycorrhizal fungi. Including chipped woody compost increases the soil carbon. Adding cover crops increases not just the soil nitrogen but also the carbon as more microbial bodies are born, feed and die. Raw organic matter is to be avoided as it acts like an unmanageable surge that can burn plants (by releasing high levels of salts and toxic byproducts) and leach nutrients. In hot humid climates, it is best to aim for slow decomposition to balance the climate’s effect causing fast decomposition. Aim for ten weeks’ worth of nutrients, not more, and watch for foliar signals of nitrogen or phosphorus deficiency that last for more than 3 weeks – a sign that things are out of balance.

In early spring (if early harvest is a priority) you will need to provide easily available nutrients. The first couple of years after switching your focus to carbon, you may be frustrated by the slow rate of decomposition and the lower yields. It takes weeks longer for surface-applied plant matter to release its nutrients than it does for tilled-in plant matter. This requires patience, planning and also has financial implications. Wait 2-4 weeks after incorporating organic residues, or 4-6 weeks after spreading them on the surface, before planting. Animal manure is not essential for soil fertility. After all, animal manure is simply plant matter that has been partially digested. By applying the plant materials to the soil surface, the digestion is done by small soil animals. It’s not so different!

Letting living mulch grow tall in very wet or very hot weather will help dry or cool the soil, but don’t let the cover crop out-compete the food crops for water! Adding cut covers is also a way of adding to soil moisture. Helen is a fan of minimizing tillage, not of banning it.  Tillage decreases organic matter, microbial diversity and abundance, and disrupts the fungal chains. Strip tillage tills out narrow strips to plant into, from an existing sward of cover crops. Tillage incorporates organic residues, adds air, and stirs up a burst of biological activity, helps warm up spring soils, reduces weeds and breaks up compaction. These benefits can be put to use rather than scorned. “Practice tillage with intention” as Helen advises.

Likewise, compost can be useful when starting on poor land, or needing to address some other kind of imbalance. Don’t rule it out completely! There is plenty of information about making good compost here. Did you know the critical temperature for killing most weed seeds is 145˚F (63˚C)? This book also offers a recipe for a liquid fertilizer for “emergency use” on crops showing a nutrient deficiency.

Author Helen Atthowe.
Credit Cindy Haugen

I appreciate reading work by growers such as Helen, who have done the research and experimentation and responded to the science. An average of one page of footnotes per chapter backs up her claims. I’m not a fan of myths and “woo-woo” gardening. This book includes many useful charts and graphs, so you can see the facts. A four-year experiment started with a 50-year old grass, clover, alfalfa and weed pasture, was divided into two fertility treatments. The first was strip-tilled, with the mowed living mulch blown onto the 4′ (1.2 m) wide crop plots each spring. The second was similar, with the addition of 4″ (10 cm) of clover/grass/weed hay mulch in the late summer before the spring strip-tilling. The hay was cut from another field on the farm. Crop yields were economically sustainable in both plots all four years, and there were almost no insect or disease problems. Yields improved in the second and third years. Yields of some crops were higher with the hay addition – peppers and onions significantly; dry beans and cabbage slightly.

The information on choosing cover crops advises using mixes of crops with different C:N ratios, and including legumes whenever possible. This chapter includes recommendations on inoculants, cover crops for various soil types, and “biographies” of four perennials, 15 annuals and the biennial yellow sweet clover.

The book reminds (or informs) us that being able to stop using pest control sprays starts with building the soil, making it comfortable for soil microbes and creating habitat for natural enemies of the pests. The next step is growing healthy plants, by providing optimal conditions of light, temperature and water, and managing plant competition from weeds or over-thick sowing. After that, focus on the balance of nutrients in the soil, especially carbon.

Suppress pests, rather than focusing on killing them. Spraying insecticides, even organic ones, can disrupt balance and leave you inheriting the task of the creatures you killed. Killing all the prey starves the predators who were keeping the prey in check. Learn to intervene with the least possible impact. Tolerate non-threatening amounts of pest damage. Approach in this order: prevention, pest diagnosis, research, monitoring and ecological decision-making. Minimal-impact interventions include trapping and pest-specific microbial insecticides like Bt (which could require ten sprayings to achieve 98% damage-free Brussels sprouts); moderate-impact interventions include broader-spectrum microbials and materials like soap, horticultural oils and minerals; heaviest-impact interventions (those likely to injure non-targets) include using neem oil, pyrethrin, pyrethrum powder and spinosad.

Designing and maintaining a disease-suppressive ecosystem is the title of the section that focuses on preventing diseases. Crop rotations and diversity of crops and other plants are at the top of the list.

Plant competition is the description of the effect of weeds and over-thick planting. We are encouraged to focus on the weeds most likely to cause problems leaving those that can peacefully co-exist with the crop. Knowing and understanding weed ecology is important: when and where does this weed do best? How can you make your vegetable gardens less comfortable for the weed?

Perennial weeds that spread underground need good attention. Helen deals with quack grass, which takes about four years to become a serious invasion problem, when three passes with the tiller 7-10 days apart in spring are needed. I’ve lived with quack grass (couch grass), a cool-weather invasive. It’s a challenge, but I do think the warm-weather Bermuda grass (wire grass) is worse. Tilling also deals with that.

Crop rotations, especially of crops that grow in different seasons, underground crops that need soil disturbance to harvest them, and crops that rapidly cover the soil, are a big help. Helen recommends growing a full-season perennial cover crop on 25-50% of your garden beds or farm area in production each year to break annual weed cycles.

Some cover crops, including cereal rye, hairy vetch, red clover, sunflowers and mustards all exude allellopathic compounds that inhibit germination of nearby seeds (weeds and crops). Often incorporating the cover crop in the soil works better than chop-and-drop, as buried plants decompose without much air, giving a stronger effect. Also tilling reduces the immediate competition from weeds. Tillage can increase yields even if you believe no-till is best! It’s a trade-off. Tillage reduces soil health. Perhaps the sweet spot is minimal tillage, such as strip tillage. Landscape fabric (reused for ten years) offers another method of weed management.

Part Two of the book (approximately half of the pages) covers an ecological approach to crop management and troubleshooting. I didn’t take as many notes of that. After the introduction to some techniques like interplanting, succession planting, making your own microbially-amended seed growing mix, and using season extension tools, the book focuses on thirty popular crops, with tips on crop management, pests and problems.

A tidbit I learned with spinach is that fall-sown plants that reach the two-true-leaf stage before winter will resume growth in late winter. I also learned that the western striped cucumber beetle has a reddish thorax, making it look more like our striped pigweed flea beetle without such sturdy leg muscles.

The crop management sections include soil and fertility needs and special ecological preferences. The problems sections describe symptoms first, then causes, then resistant cultivars and other strategies for avoiding that problem in future. A valuable reference, and good winter browsing when reviewing the season past and preparing for the coming year. The index covers a substantial 18 pages, in three columns, promising to be comprehensive!

Helen Atthowe still acts as advisor to her previous farm, Woodleaf Farm in eastern Oregon, and is a farm consultant in the US and internationally. I notice that Helen is a speaker at the November 2023 Carolina Farm Stewardships Sustainable Farming Conference.

Helen Atthowe, November 2017.
Photo from Veganic World

Book Review, The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

 

The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables, Adam Alexander, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022. 306 pages, $22.00.

Adam Alexander is a seed collector, seed conserver, seed distributor, gardener, and a fascinating writer. He set out to find the origin of many vegetables, dividing the book into crops arriving from east of his home in Wales, and crops arriving from the west. He is a researcher and traveler, gourmet foodie, and one-time market gardener who couldn’t sell red Brussels sprouts.

He has joyfully searched out and found many rare, sometimes endangered (and in at least one case, the last known) seeds. He grows out the seeds he is given, and returns some seed to the person who lent them to him. He is very respectful of people’s cultures, and won’t grow for financial gain any crop that has been entrusted to him. He has enchanting stories of his efforts to seek out the seeds he’d heard about, in vegetable markets and dusty cupboard corners.

He has a website, podcast, videos and seed list at https://theseeddetective.co.uk/ He has 499 varieties of vegetable seeds, and grows out around 70 of them each year, in his garden, which includes a polytunnel (hoophouse). For some of the crops, he works with the Heritage Seed Library in the UK. If you live in the UK, he will send you a packet of seeds for a donation of £1 plus £1.50 for postage. As I write this, in August, many varieties are out of stock. Seeds are maturing, be patient.

Adam explains why garlic was fed every day to Egyptian pyramid builders; how chilies from 6000 BCE were found in a Mexican cave; why there is so much confusion between squash, pumpkins, zucchini/courgettes and marrows; and why giant Christmas lima beans are popular in northern Myanmar.

Christmas Lima Beans from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Agricultural history and archeology contain intriguing stories, and Adam tells these tales with humor, passion, insight. Maritime history is included, so we understand why and how certain beans were valued as storable foods for the crew on long journeys, incidentally spreading the leftover beans in the land of their arrival.

From the east, Britain received various peas, fava (broad) beans, carrots before they were orange, leeks (no, they really are not native to Britain!), asparagus, lettuce, garlic and many brassicas with unfamiliar names. From the west came tomatoes, green (“French”) beans and their dried offspring, maize in its many types, lima beans, runner beans, chili peppers and the whole squash-pumpkin hyphenated extended family (except Lagenaria siceraria gourds).

This book includes global histories and geography, and starts from a British perspective in the demarcation of East and West. There is a mistaken reference to Thomas Jefferson’s New York State home of Monticello. Elsewhere, the author correctly locates Monticello in Virginia. Jefferson did rent a house in New York City while Secretary of State. “The only person who never makes a mistake is the person who never does anything!” (Theodore Roosevelt)

Adam truly wants us all to enjoy healthy food – this is far from dry research. Vegetables have been industrialized to maximize profit for some at the expense of those who toil in the fields. Crops have, in some cases, been patented. Their flavors and nutrients have been ignored. We can change this. We can rebuild biodiversity, bring back flavor and the enjoyment of eating vegetables! We can put plants “at the heart of good cuisines and health” as Tim Lang says in his Foreword.

In his previous life, Adam was a film and television producer, used to traveling widely. In his introduction, Adam tells of an evening when his film crew took over the kitchen of their hotel in Donetsk, because they were hungry and the kitchen staff were on strike in protest at the foreign film crew staying there. Adam was able to shop well, with a very favorable currency exchange rate. He found some tennis-ball sized sweet red peppers with a fiery heart. They enjoyed their dinner and Adam was able to take some seeds home. This started his seed detective journey. From then on, he used every opportunity to seek out farmers’ markets and ask the stall-holders about local varieties. He started to build a seed library, because he realized some of the seeds were in danger of going extinct.

His began to wonder about how those crops had arrived in that country, and what was their place of origin. There were eight Centres of Diversity identified by Nikolai Vavilov, who created the world’s biggest seed bank, the All-Russian Research Institute. Since then, additional Centres of Diversity have been recognized, such as in Australasia and Africa. In this book, we meet plants from just three of those Centres: the Fertile Crescent in the Middle east, Mesoamerica, and the northern parts of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. These hilly or mountainous, tropical or sub-tropical regions are now associated with drought, but at the time of domestication 12,000 years ago, were rich in natural resources including rainfall. Our current day vegetables are the result of Neolithic farmers selecting plants to save for seed.

According to the historian Mary Beard, the Romans were the first society to export their food culture as part of their brand, Cabbages, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce and leeks all traveled with the legions, as familiar comfort food to fuel them for the invasions. Sophisticated Arabic irrigation systems enabled Moors invading Spain in the eighth century CE, to plant saffron, apricots, artichokes, carob, eggplants, grapefruits, carrots, coriander and rice, which all became basic ingredients of Spanish cuisine. Vegetables have been traveling the globe for a long time! Here I cannot include much of the particular seed tales, so read the book!

Adam Alexander shopping for seeds. https://theseeddetective.co.uk/my-book/

Adam’s first tale is of a local pea variety in Laos. Through an interpreter, he asked a market stall-holder about some pea seeds she had for sale. To his every question, her unvarying reply was “Of course”. They were peas, they grew tall, she saved the seed herself, and had been doing so for a long time, and of course, the whole pod was edible. When he got them back to Wales and planted them in late spring, they grew, and grew, topping his extended trellis. They produced abundantly and were delicious. His short row of peas also produced over a kilo of seeds!

Peas were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent over 8,500 years ago, from a twining winter annual in Syria. Peas we eat today come from two species, the round (mostly grown for drying) and the wrinkly (most fresh-eating peas). 2,000 years ago, the Syrian pea crossed with a wild climbing pea from the eastern Mediterranean area. This “modern” pea spread across the much of Asia and Europe. A third species of pea was independently domesticated in Ethiopia. In Europe up until the seventeenth century, most peas were grown to be dried and stored for winter. Later, farmers developed peas for fresh eating. At the end of the nineteenth century, the USDA had recorded 408 varieties of peas grown commercially, but by 1983, 90% had been lost, and only 25 appear in the records. This threat to human survival is mirrored with all edible crops.

Mysteries and scandals abound. One tall pea tale involves seed reputedly grown from one live among three seeds taken from an Egyptian tomb. It was shown to be identical to a common Dwarf Branching Marrowfat pea. And yet the charlatan continued in business, selling to gullible gardeners. In 1861 the Royal Horticultural Society in London tested 235 varieties of peas, and found only 11 worthy of merit (but what were their criteria?)

One of the peas in Adam’s collection is named Avi Joan, and came from Catalonia. Over ten feet tall, covered with pods of sweet tasty peas, still good when mature. A truly local variety, with only one known grower, it could have died out, but now has many growers in the UK.

The other tales of seeds from the east cover fava beans from Syria, carrots from Afghanistan, becoming orange in Holland, leeks domesticated in Egypt and Mesopotamia at least 4,500 years ago, Greek krambé (leafy greens) 2,600 years ago, asparagus depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphs in the third millennium BCE and growing wild (feral?) in Britain 2,000 years ago, lettuce domesticated eight thousand years ago perhaps in Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, and garlic originally from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The oldest garlic remains, dated to the fourth millennium BCE, were found in an Israeli cave near the Dead Sea.

Popping garlic for replanting at Twin Oaks.
Photo Bell Oaks

After this Adam considers arrivals from the west. Excavations in Mexico have given us a timeline of South American ancestors transitioning from being hunter-gatherers to farming 12,000- 9,000 years ago, after the supply of game decreased, and pressure on gathered crops reduced availability. Many crops were introduced from outside the immediate area, including amaranth, maize, squash and chilies. About 3,000 years ago, almost all the diet was farmed. About 500 years ago, these foods reached the Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

At this point we must acknowledge that European colonizers violently displaced and killed most of the native people in North America and the Caribbean and brought in abducted and enslaved Africans. In the history of Europe, we mentioned invaders from one country to another, in much earlier days, in some cases thousands of years earlier. The past history of the human race was not all peaceful. Current events are not all peaceful. The flow of foods from one culture to another is generally a better aspect of ourselves.

Columbus, when returning to Spain from the Bahamas in 1493, brought maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, chilies and two species of beans. Twenty years later, Cortés brought from Mexico avocadoes, pineapples, cocoa, squash, more bean species, tomatoes, cassava and potatoes. These crops from a small corner of southern Mexico have become embedded in European food culture.

Tomatoes are all descended from the wild tomato Solanum pimpinellifolium, indigenous to coastal Peru. “Common” beans, Phaseolus vulgaris originated in an area from Northern Mexico to Argentina, and were grown in Britain by 1597.

Pinar del Rio Bean Seed Bank at Finca Hoyo Bonito, Cuba. Display of black bean seeds. Photo Pam Dawling

Identifying the wild ancestor of corn took scientists until the 1930’s, because the changes from teosinte to modern day maize are profound. Teosinte is a short weedy grass without any cob-like ears. It has a head consisting of about 12 kernels in two rows along a hard stem. It is now accepted that a single domestication event brought maize into the world. Domestication was a feat of impressive crop selection from genetically diverse teosinte enabling rapid mutations. The common idea that evolution takes centuries of gradual changes is not true. As if by magic, maize suddenly appeared at archeological sites. It didn’t take many generations of Neolithic plant breeding 10,000 or more years ago in the Balsas Valley in SW Mexico to open the way for breeding the 20,000 landraces of teosinte and maize that exist today.

The oldest evidence of lima beans is from 8,500 years ago, in Guitarrero Cave in Peru.

In northern Mexico and Puerto Rico the limas are the smaller more drought-resistant and heat-tolerant Sieva type. Ships returned to Europe and to Portuguese and Spanish colonies in Columbus’s time with lima beans to feed the crew. Portuguese ships from the fifteenth century on sailed round the Cape of Good Hope to southern India. The pallar types of Lima beans from northern Chile and Peru, probably crossed the Pacific to the colony in the Philippines, from the sixteenth century onwards. By the end of the eighteenth century, both types of lima beans were commonly found in China and India.

Lima beans do not grow outdoors in the British climate, but their close relative, runner beans, native to high elevations of Mexico and Central America, do very well. There is some evidence that they were domesticated by 4,000 BCE. They reached England around the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Chili peppers to grow from The Seed Detective collection

The next tale is of chili peppers (spelled chilli in the UK). What is the fascination with eating the hottest possible peppers? The earliest find of domesticated chilies is in a cave in the Tehuacán Valley in south-central Mexico, and dates from 5,000-6,000 BCE.  Five species have been domesticated, starting 7,000 years ago in Mesoamerica. The species with the hottest peppers, C. chinense, is native to the Caribbean, the Yucatan and Central America, and includes the habanero, (there is no tilde over the n, no ny pronunciation – that is just English speakers trying too hard to sound foreign!), the Dragon’s Breath, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Scotch Bonnet, popular in Jamaica.

The Arawak people in the Bahamas were eating chilies when Columbus arrived in 1492 and they had arrived in Europe by 1542. Chilies traveled so fast that a Dutch botanist named the C. chinense species believing they came originally from China! People in India might not realize chili peppers came from Mexico! Chilies became such a big part of cuisine on the Indian subcontinent that every region now has its own special variety. Surprisingly, chilies did not reach North America until the Spanish brought them at the end of the sixteenth century.

Lastly we turn to the pumpkin and squash family (Cucurbita). Domestication of squash started 10,000 years ago in the Americas. Before Columbus brought back squashes from the Americas, white-flowered bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) were widely grown in the so-called “Old World” for the edible seeds and as containers, and sometimes the flesh was eaten (some was toxic). This led to confusion in names between the two incompatible genera.

Today we divide squash into 4 species. C. pepo is native to North America, where it has been cultivated for thousands of years. Acorn squash and maxima squashes, such as those cultivated by the Algonquin, were valuable to the early colonizers who did not have ovens, but were able to bake hard-skinned squashes (emptied of seeds and refilled with milk and spices) in the fire ashes.

There are two types of C. moschata (native to Mesoamerica, probably northern Peru), the ones we know as Butternut squash, and the giant crooknecks, such as Tahitian Butternut, not to be confused with C. mixta Cushaw squashes (native to Florida). Many names were used for different subgroups of squashes, pumpkins, melons, gourds, cucumbers. Immature squash of many kinds have been consumed, and often called zucchini. Most canned pumpkin and commercial pumpkin pies are made from butternut squash.

Green Striped Cushaw Winter Squash, a Mixta variety, also known as Striped Crookneck. Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

C. maxima is probably a descendent of wild C. andreana, native to parts of Argentina and Uruguay, where it became one of the key crops of the Native Guarani people. 1,500-year-old whole squashes have been found in Salta, in the mountains of northwest Argentina. The Spanish brought C.maxima north, where it became a widespread part of the cuisine of Native Americans, and by the end of the sixteenth century, it was found across the European colonies there. C. maxima squashes reached Japan in the eighteenth century, where they were bred to make distinctive varieties and types like Kabocha and Kuri.

A fascination with growing giant pumpkins (or squash) has developed in the last 500 years. This is not about the food supply any more than the quest for the hottest chili is.

Today, desires for nutritional value, flavor and quality are moving public opinion away from the drive to more, bigger, better at any cost. That path led us to poor quality food without much flavor, that relied on pesticides rather than pest resistance or tolerance, fungicides rather than disease-resistance, and heavy inputs of chemical fertilizers to achieve the touted high yields.

Research and development on how to feed the planet with the climate in chaos, population growing and available land shrinking, is turning more towards cultivating biodiversity and valuing sustainable and traditional farming methods. It is important for the well-being of us all that we do not divide the people who are scraping together to buy the cheapest, mostly ultra-processed, unhealthy food, from the people who can afford to feed themselves organic, sustainably produced food. Small-scale diverse vegetable farming is capable of generating more income per acre than large-scale monocropping. Our task is to ensure food justice.

Diverse farming will give us resilience in the face of climate change. Collaboration between farmers in distributing their produce is a success for us all. Home gardeners providing food for their households are part of the bigger picture of feeding the world. I learned from Adam’s book that there are more than a million acres of gardens in the UK, which represents more than 8% of all land growing crops. Maintaining local varieties can produce high yields, and, again, give us resilience. Restoring and maintaining seed libraries of local varieties around the world will bring us more strength than being in thrall to agrochemical mega-businesses. The website has a Save-and-Sow section with growing tips.

Author Adam Alexander

Book Review The Home-Scale Forest Garden by Dani Baker

The cover of Dani Baker’s book The Home-Scale Forest Garden

The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape, Dani Baker, Chelsea Green Publishing, May 2022. 325 pages, 8″ x 10″, full color photos, $34.95.

 The Home-Scale Forest Garden provides plenty of detailed information to help others succeed in creating small-scale resilient low maintenance edible havens. Dani Baker started creating her forest gardens over ten years ago on Wellesley Island in the St Lawrence River, between New York and Canada (zone 4). She and her partner raise certified organic produce, grass-fed beef and goats. She tells of her successes and failures, and the strategies she developed to overcome the challenges of very wet soil, deer attacks, climate chaos and more.

The first third of this book covers planning and planting a small forest garden.  The main part of the book is a directory of plants, to help you choose plants for every level, (or “story” as the permaculturists call them). Everything from canopy trees to vines and fungi and the full range in between. The last part of the book helps with creating compatible plant groupings. Appendices give a table of nutrient accumulator plants and which nutrients each accumulates; a chart of blooming and harvest times, and a calendar of monthly maintenance tasks.

Forest gardens are modeled after nature, rather than farms: low maintenance, mixed plantings, permanent soil coverage, continuously increasing carbon sequestration. This kind of garden is regenerative: the ecological state improves each year as humus builds up. Yes, some of the plants take a long time to reach maturity and provide harvest. But herbs, berries and perennial vegetables can be harvested from your first year.

Dani and her partner David Belding bought 102 acres in the northern US, close to the Canadian border, when they retired from full-time careers, thinking to dabble in landscaping and keep a couple of horses, not to farm. The land was formerly a dairy farm, more recently hay ground with a small vegetable market farm. In their first spring, they planted a small vegetable garden, as Dani had done as a teenager. They sold all they grew, so the next year they doubled the size of the garden and bought two pigs. Retirement wasn’t boring! The garden increased to ¾ ac (0.3 ha) and the farm gained chickens, ducks, goats, beef cows and more pigs. Dani focused on the gardens, David on the livestock.

In their seventh year, Dani attended a permaculture workshop, inspiring her to create her own forest garden, fenced to keep the livestock and wild predators out. They did not want to reduce the pasture, so they chose a scrubby 100 x 200’ (30 x 61 m) area near the road. Your forest garden might be as small as 25 ft2 (2.3 m2).

They cleared the brush and designed a garden including an events space, a pond with a bridge, a patio and various plantings. Quite a bit of hardscaping (paths) was involved, meaning that long-term planning was important – no tilling everything up in November anymore! Three years later they doubled the size of their forest garden, and also expanded into the adjacent woodland, to plant under existing trees. This wooded area had standing water a lot of the year, so Dani created hügelkultur mounds, which are fully explained in chapter 4. Basically they are piles of wood trimmings that become raised beds.

For those already thinking they would miss tomatoes too much to do this, be reassured that both are possible for people with enough land. Dani has an area of market garden beds near the house. It’s also possible to integrate some annual crops within a forest garden in the early years when trees are small and plenty of light can reach the lower levels of plants. Ultimately the two kinds of gardens do better apart, as their needs and cultivation methods are different.

This is a book applying various methods, including some found in permaculture books, but it’s not a permaculture theory book, and Dani does not consider herself a permaculturist. There are none of those diagrams of the concepts of guilds, swales and redundancy in functions. You don’t have to be a believer to find value in these practices.

The six principles the author values and uses are:

  • “maximizing diversity,
  • maximizing solar absorption,
  • maximizing water conservation
  • designing for sustainability,
  • building-in redundancy and
  • minimizing human labor into the future.”

Her hedges and ground cover areas all have diverse species, and you can read which ones. By including wide paths and a patio area, Dani has created lots of edges allowing sunlight in.

Using all the vertical space increases the plants absorbing the sunlight. The seven plant levels include

  1. the overstory of trees to 30′ (9 m) or more
  2. the understory of fruit, nut and other short trees, 10-30′ (3-9 m) tall
  3. the shrub layer of berry bushes and other plants, 3-12′ (1-3.5 m) tall
  4. the herbaceous layer of perennials that die back and regrow annually, 2-10′ (60 cm-3 m) tall
  5. the ground cover layer close to the soil, including strawberries and leguminous cover crops
  6. the root layer of plants with edible roots, such as sunchokes
  7. the vining layer, with height depending on the available supports

A fungus layer can be added, but fungi aren’t plants, so you might consider them off-list.

Those creating very small forest gardens, even in a container, will have to select some layers and not others.

To maximize water conservation, create a lot of leaf canopy, keep the soil covered, choose appropriate plants, collect rainwater and runoff and increase water-absorbing mulches. At the beginning, you can cover the soil with wood chips, improving conditions both immediately and longer-term. Notice where water collects on your land and match water-loving plants with damp locations. Ponds can collect and store water, to be used as needed for watering plants, as well as increasing the habitat for more species of small and larger creatures.

Design so that you do not usually have to actively water plants–the goal is a self-sustaining garden. Be sure to include nitrogen-fixing plants, some deep-rooting plants that accumulate nutrients, some that attract beneficial insects and some “aromatic pest confusers” to make pests unwelcome.

The concept of redundancy is to provide multiple ways a need can be met, (and multiple needs met by any one function). This increases sustainability and reduces the chance of the garden failing. Water can be provided by rain, ponds and a hose. Ponds provide other functions too, increasing the network of support.

All of the above contribute to reducing future human labor, which is a fine goal for anyone, but especially those creating gardens during their retirement years. Setting up a forest garden and getting it firmly established can be quite a lot of work, depending on the scale. After that, it will provide for you, and the rest of the ecosystem.

Dani Baker, author of The Home-Scale Forest Garden

It is very important to plan your forest garden before planting anything, or making any changes to the space. You are creating long-term changes, not an annual garden that will be tilled up for a fresh start every year. Not all your plans will work out as expected, but not to worry: those who have a plan are best-placed to understand when and even how to make a change. Dani has examples, including how the dog changed the access through the hügelkultur area.

Part of your plan might be to try out plants that haven’t previously thrived in your climate. You can do this by finding the best microclimate in your garden for these crops, and improving those microclimates to suit the crops better. You can experiment on a small scale somewhere else on your land that has a suitable microclimate, to see if it will work. Assuming you don’t have huge financial resources, you’ll want to mostly grow plants you know will do well. Nut trees take a long time to provide a harvest, and who knows what the climate will be like by then? You might rather stick with berry bushes.

The first practical step, after dreaming, is to closely observe the land you plan to use, throughout every season and every type of weather. Pay attention to soil types, drainage, slopes, shade, microclimates, shelter or not from prevailing winds. Make a sketch of the various areas within your site and indicate the flows of water and wind, the sun and shade. Check the USDA winter-hardiness zone and soil types (ask your Extension agent). Dig holes after rain to assess how quickly the soil drains, and note where the rivulets run. Decide if you need to install culverts or drains. Decide if you want to include a pond, and if so, where would be the best spot.

Next, make a scale map, with accurate measurements of lengths in all directions. Mark existing trees, stumps, shrubs, slopes, rock outcroppings, flow of surface water and any human-built structures. The book explains how to triangulate distances from two known points. Add contour lines. Check the map against the territory, ensuring its accuracy.

With an accurate map you can start to pencil in your ideas, balancing all the factors already discussed. Site the big trees, ensuring you give them adequate space. Fill in with the next tallest plants, and work down by height. Make sure your taller plants won’t shade smaller ones that need good light, or ponds that benefit from solar warming. Site windbreaks where you need them, and plants that tolerate wet soil in the dampest spots.

Dani offers planning tips, like cutting discs of paper for the large trees, and moving them around your map to get the best configuration. She quotes from Martin Crawford, who wrote Creating a Forest Garden. He suggests:

  • Choose fast-growing species that will serve their ultimate purpose
  • Plant trees and shrubs close enough to create a continuous dense mass when mature
  • For windbreaks, plant a line of trees perpendicular to the direction of the wind, then plant smaller bushier plants downwind
  • Don’t expect other plants to thrive close to a windbreak, because roots compete
  • Reduce weed competition to speed forest development

Dani chose hügelkultur beds for the places that often had standing water. It was a good solution for making raised beds that would keep the plants’ roots out of the water. You will need to accumulate lots of resource materials, (unless you are making a tiny forest garden). Where possible, get the heavy piles of organic matter delivered to the high point of the land, so you only ever move it downhill!

If you need heavy equipment on the land to construct walkways, ponds, bridges, gathering areas, or install culverts, do all this before any planting. Next, do any slow-change techniques like sheet mulching to kill weeds, or grazing, or rooting with pigs (who love quack grass). Land prep before planting is explained: build raised beds, make hügelkultur mounds on a base of dead logs and branches, build swales and give them an initial planting of annual vegetables to provide roots to stabilize the mound until time for a permanent planting, and how to frost seed. Implement your deer and livestock exclusion plan, before planting a single perennial. Later, consider adding bird and bat boxes and insect hotels.

Planting large perennials is different from dealing with annual vegetables, so be guided by this experienced author. Make yourself a nursery in a separate, shady area, where you can heel-in trees and shrubs that arrive before you are ready to plant them, store “extras” and where you can propagate from plants you already have.

Here in the book you’ll find step-by-step instructions for planting bare-root trees and shrubs in the dormant season. For perspective, there is a photo of a large number of metal nametags from perennial plants that failed in Dani’s forest garden! Some failures stem from poor decisions by the gardener, others from mislabeling by the seller, or a poor or damaged specimen, or injury in transit, or bad luck (sometimes known as insufficient or faulty information). There are also instructions for planting containerized trees, transplanting, pruning, fruit-thinning, weeding and watering. And dealing with pests. Wire trunk guards can protect young woody plants from girdling by rodents, which can kill the plant.

Once you have a certain woody plant in your garden, you can propagate from that to provide more. For berry bushes, this might only add one or two years before the new plant fruits too, getting good value from your initial purchase. The book explains layering, hardwood cuttings, division and seed.

In Part 2 you can browse and select plants that seem a good fit for your forest garden. The section on nut and fruit trees explains grafted trees, “southwest injury” where bark splits in spring due to expansion and contraction of the trunk on sunny south-facing afternoons, only to get very cold at night. This is why tree trunks are sometimes painted white. Chilling periods are explained: a minimum period of cold temperatures required during dormancy for successful fruiting. Allow for global heating when you decide which fruit trees to buy!

In the plant directory, each of the descriptions includes a summary of the plant’s native range, mature height, width of canopy, soil conditions, sunlight needs, and hardiness range. A system of icons indicates some of the key functions or benefits that plant provides. Dani adds some notes in her personal observations. These sidebars include things that went wrong; extra benefits and how to take advantage of them (wild groundcovers); extra needs (such as cross-pollination, stratification and scarification) and how to provide for them; or when to forego them (blueberries, because they require acid soil); practices that can work even if you expect them to fail (transplanting shrubs in the fall in zone 4, planting shrubs with fine fibrous roots in dry locations); particular pests (raspberry vine borer, plum curculio);

There are 13 tall trees, 21 shorter trees, 27 shrubs, 38 herbaceous plants, 16 ground covers, each with a beautiful photo. Each section has some species you will likely be familiar with and some unusual ones, such as Korean nut pine, hazelbert, shipova, buffaloberry, New Jersey tea, Good King Henry, saffron crocus, water celery and cinnamon vine (air potato).

The chapter on successful groupings of varied plants will give you plenty of ideas, and tips for calculating how to include enough nitrogen-fixing plants to supply all the other plants in your garden. With plants for pollinators, rather than calculating, just go for diversity and spanning the growing season so you have something in flower all the time. Plant elderberries on the edge nearest your potato plants and they will attract beneficial wasps that parasitize Colorado potato beetles. Plant groupings are suggested for sites in full sun or partial shade. There are tips for planting orchard rows and hedge-lines with shrubs and smaller plants in between the biggest trees. You can even save time and plant a (carefully chosen!) group of nine plants in one hole!

If you become enchanted by the ideas and the photos in this book, you can start to make a plan, and maps, and a plant list, and turn your dream into reality. Even if you only have a large planter on a patio.

Book Review Compost Science for Gardeners, by Robert Pavlis

 

Compost Science for Gardeners by Robert Pavlis

Compost Science for Gardeners, Simple Methods for Nutrient Rich Soil, Robert Pavlis,

New Society Publishers, January 2023. 224 pages, 6 x 0.52 x 9 inches, charts, diagrams and photos. $19.95.

Robert Pavlis has been a gardener for over 45 years, and is a very good science writer. I have previously reviewed Soil Science for Gardeners and Plant Science for Gardeners. This is a valuable, concise, accessible book for home gardeners, and also homesteaders, market gardeners, small-scale and large-scale crop farmers.

The book gives an introduction to the what and why of compost, and then covers the role of compost in the soil, the science of composting, compostable materials, managing the composting process, the options of piles, bins and tumblers, easy composting methods, vermicomposting, Bokashi composting, eco-enzyme composting, buying compost, compost tea, choosing a composting method, using compost and discarding compost myths. There are some almost cult-like groups with beliefs about how to make compost that are not science-based. The author has formed a Facebook group, Garden Fundamentals, you can join, to learn science-based information and help bust some myths yourself.

Garden Fundamentals logo

The introduction explains the importance of high organic matter in the soil, and the cycling of carbon and energy that can increase soil OM. Soil with more organic matter holds onto nutrients better, leaching less, keeping more nutrients in place for the crops. As gardeners we can help the process. We can leave extra plant material where it falls, spread tree leaves around our plants, and establish bug hotels. We can make compost from inedible and unaesthetic plant matter and use the mature compost to fertilize and build the soil, and feed the soil biology.

Nationally, 30% of garbage is yard waste and food scraps. At the landfill, these produce methane, a greenhouse gas with 25 times more global heating power than carbon dioxide. And then add on the pollution from the garbage trucks. It’s plain to see that making compost benefits everyone (except companies selling fertilizer).

There are quick and easy ways of returning garden waste to the soil (chop and drop), and there are labor-intensive ways that kill some weed seeds and diseased plants, and break down woody fibrous materials. You choose. When you do it right, there are no noxious smells. There are even methods you can use inside your house.

Screening a large pile of compost for the greenhouse beds. Photo Wren Vile

The Role of Compost

  • Mulch: keeps soil cooler, damper; may or may not reduce weeds.
  • Fertilizer: contains lots of plant nutrients including micronutrients, that are slowly and steadily released. Because compost has a high Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC, meaning it can hold lots of nutrients), nutrients stick to it, reducing the leaching rate.
  • Soil Builder: adds organic matter, improving aggregation in both sandy and clay soils, helping soil ingredients combine into larger soil particles, upgrading soil structure.
  • Water retainer: a 5% increase in organic material quadruples the soil’s ability to hold water.
  • Toxin remover: compost attracts and binds toxins, preventing plants absorbing them.
  • Acidity buffer: compost brings soil pH closer to neutral, from either side of the scale.
  • Microbe feeder and habitat: More microbes = healthier soil. Add compost, don’t add microbes! Provide the right conditions and they will multiply.
  • Reducer of landfills and greenhouse gas.

If you haven’t already read the author’s earlier book Soil Science for Gardeners, I recommend that. There is a brief description in this book, and charts and a diagram of the soil nitrogen cycle. Plants cannot use large pieces of organic matter, but need it to have it decomposed enough to release the ions. Ions from organic sources or bags of chemical fertilizer are identical. What is different is the ratios and mixtures of ions you are applying.

Tilling is controversial, because it destroys soil aggregates, and brings up weed seeds from lower in the soil profile. Tilling adds air to the upper level of soil, increasing the rate of decomposition of the organic matter. However, it has been found that the organic matter deeper in the soil increases after tilling, so that the total in the top 12” (30 cm) remains unchanged. This may be due to plants making deeper roots (roots are OM!). If you don’t need to dig it in, it is better for the soil and the planet to add materials to the surface.

Digging compost into our cold frames in preparation for fall planting.
Photo Wren Vile

What happens during the composting process? Understanding this helps you make informed decisions in selecting materials and managing the process. Larger life forms play a role in composting by mechanically reducing material to smaller pieces, making the foods accessible to microbes. These macroorganisms do not thrive in hot conditions – they leave when things heat up, and return later. It doesn’t work to second-guess what the compost pile needs. Adding earthworms doesn’t help. They’ll make their own way when conditions are right.

Composting happens when microbes decompose organic matter. Different microbes will self-select for the conditions you provide, just as macroorganisms do. They will multiply and thrive if temperatures and moisture suit them.

Plants are made of cells, and cells are made of molecules. Manure is plant matter that an animal has started to decompose. It’s still made of molecules, mostly unchanged as yet. After composting, all the large molecules have been changed into smaller, simpler molecules: amino acids, simple sugars, the stuff that microbes seek out for dinner. After dinner, and also after life, microbes release nutrients that plants can use. Compost happens!

Here is a clear explanation of the various stages of hot composting and the various kinds of microbes active during the different phases of the process. Worth buying the book for this alone! If you have a lot of seeding weeds, choose a hot composting method, but also chose better gardening techniques that control weeds!

At a garden scale, it will take at least 3 warm months to complete a hot-composting process. In colder climates, it will take 4-6 months or more. Cold compost piles can take 1-2 years. Commercial compost can be “made” in two weeks, but it needs another month to mature. “The first phase of bokashi is done in two weeks, but it is not really composting,” says the author.

We are encouraged to understand the C:N ratio of the materials we use, rather than use the simplistic (and confusing) Browns/Greens concept. Mostly we are feeding microbes, and their perfect food has a 24:1 C:N ratio. There is a helpful table of the C and N content of various compost materials you can use to calculate a recipe, using what you have available. The author offers an Accurate Calculation Method, an Easier Method, and an Even Easier Method.

Don’t worry about the pH. You don’t need to add lime. Home-made compost is usually in the 7.0-7.5 range initially, and drops a bit once in the garden.

A large proportion of the nutrients in finished compost are only released slowly (over maybe 5 years). If you run short of compost one year, don’t worry, your soil probably has enough from previous applications. When is a pile of compost ready to use? Try the Seedling Test. Put some compost mixed 50:50 with soil in a pot. Compare with a pot of just soil. Sow some quick-germinating seeds in each pot. As they emerge, compare the seedlings in each pot. If the plants grow equally well in both pots, your compost is fit for purpose. If the seeds in the compost/soil mix don’t emerge, or are stunted, allow the compost to age longer.

Robert Pavlis has three lists of compostable materials: Good, Bad and Controversial. He addresses antibiotics in animal manures, herbicides in animal fodder and yard trimmings; unnecessary worries about coffee grounds and various food scraps; eggshells, woody branches and used potting soil (OK but pointless); paper and its possible included toxins (not enough to worry about, in the author’s opinion, but not a particularly useful compost ingredient anyway).

The controversial ingredients include diseased plant material (know which disease, advises Pavlis); “compostable” plastics (they don’t break down using garden compost methods); human waste (too much sodium in urine, maybe transmissible diseases in feces); pet waste (maybe your own dog or cat, whose parasites and diseases you already risk, but not other people’s pets, unless you do a good hot composting method); toxic plants (diluted by other ingredients, digested by microbes, don’t worry); weeds (if you don’t let weeds seeds, you won’t have to worry about the compost; if they do seed, you’ll need hot composting the render them unviable; pernicious perennial weeds are best killed before composting); wood ash –  no point as it doesn’t compost, useful to add directly to acid soil.

Bad composting materials include “disposable” diapers (contain plastic and hydrogels); thorny plants; dryer lint, carpet fluff, vacuum cleaner bag contents, fabrics (these days these are largely synthetic fibers or cotton treated to be crease-resistant).

Compost-making is both art and science, and individual gardeners have their preferred twists on the basic method. Basic principles include

  • Location: indoors or outdoors? Indoors limits your options of method. Outdoors, you’ll need a water supply, proximity to the garden and other sources of materials (truck access?), a flat area with drainage and sunshine, and distance from neighbors. Check local laws.
  • Storage of ingredients: to use a hot method, you’ll need to store ingredients until you have a quantity and balance of inputs to build a pile. If you can’t do this, go for a cold system.
  • Air: turn the pile, or stir with an aerator, or make the pile with vented piping included, or layer the materials as you make the pile.
  • Water: add some every few inches as you build the pile. When you turn the pile, squeeze some of the material – it should be damp like a sponge, not sodden, not dry. Add more as needed. In wet climates, add a roof or a tarp over the top. If the pile gets too wet, turn it and fluff it up.

Get a compost thermometer, and once the pile reaches 145ºF (63ºC) – possibly as often as once a week – turn it to mix things up and start it reheating. Compost tumblers make turning easy. Three-bin systems give you somewhere to turn the pile into. A fork is the best tool for turning compost. One way to speed things along is to pre-shred your ingredients, perhaps by spreading them on a patch of grass and mowing them.

You do not need to add compost activators. These may be just microbes, which you should have plenty of. Or they may contain some fertilizer, in an expensive form. You don’t need to add phosphorus or potassium, but you might benefit from adding some nitrogen. Urine diluted 10:1 with water can provide that.

Once the pile no longer reheats, you have reached the curing stage, which takes about two months. Immature compost has a high C:N ratio, and is acidic. It could damage plants. If you are spreading your compost on the soil rather than incorporating it, you don’t need to cure it. This minimizes leaching. If you plan to dig it in just before planting, better to fully cure it first.

There is a troubleshooting chart of things that can go wrong and how to fix them. There are some photos and tables of pros and cons of each outdoor composting system. Resist any urge to turn your compost tumbler more than once a week, or you will disrupt the heating cycle and slow things down.

Pit and trench composting are methods involving gradually filling holes in the garden with compost materials and then covering with soil. This method works well for kitchen scraps.in winter and spring, when there are fewer other ingredients. A keyhole bed with a central cylindrical cage for compost materials is a version of this idea.

There are electric “composters” which grind and dry kitchen scraps. They do not actually compost the food scraps, or even finely grind them. They use your money to produce dried food scraps, not fertilizer. And they use electricity doing it. When mixed with soil, the food rehydrates and grows mold.

Six worm bins.
Photo NCSU
https://composting.ces.ncsu.edu/vermicomposting-2/earthworms-and-worm-bins/

Vermi-composters are bins holding worms, food scraps and other organic material, which together produce worm castings, which can be used as fertilizer. Vermicomposting is faster than traditional hot composting and can be done indoors, even in winter. The book contains enough detail for you to know whether this practice is one you want to try.

Microbes are the worms’ main food. Worms only digest 5%-10% of their food intake. The rest is excreted, along with a lot of microbes. Learn how much to feed, so that it has mostly gone by the next feeding. 1000 worms (1lb, 0.5 kg) will eat about 0.5lb (0.25 kg) each day. When food runs out, the worms will eat the bedding. Shredded newsprint, fall leaves, aged wood chips and more, make good bedding. There is a trouble-shooting chart.

The worm bin material (“vermicompost”) is a mix of worm castings, bedding material, uneaten food scraps, nutrients, worms, worm egg cocoons and microbes. While the worm bin is active, leachate liquid drops out from a drain hole in the bottom of the bin. This contains organic matter, nutrients and microbes. It can get smelly. It can be diluted 10:1 with water, to use on potted plants, or to water the garden.

Vermicompost will be ready to harvest 6-24 weeks after setup. Ideally, about 50% of the bin will be bedding and compost, and 50% castings. You can use the castings and compost mix in your garden right away. Worm castings have 10-20 times as much microbial activity as soil or most other forms of organic matter. They compost themselves once in the garden. To use for potting soil store it for two months, then mix 20% by volume in your potting mix.

The composition of vermicompost is a little higher in N than regular compost made from the same materials, and the potassium is the same, but the phosphorus is almost four times the level in the regular compost, which can be a problem if your soil is already high in P.

Next the mysteries of Bokashi fermentation (often called composting) are revealed. It’s an anaerobic process, similar to making silage, but usually done in small batches for small gardens. Most pathogens are killed. Waste organic matter is combined with sweetened “Bokashi bran” which contains fermentation microbes in a lidded bucket. Bokashi can be made indoors, and is a useful option in climates with cold winters. All kinds of food can be included with no worries about rodents.

Ignore the claims about “Effective Microbes,” because a study has found them unnecessary. Farmers often start Bokashi with naturally occurring microorganisms rather than buying the 80-microbe EM-1 product. One study found. no difference between using indigenous microorganisms, yeast or nothing at all.

A dark liquid leachate is drained out of the bottom and used as fertilizer, diluted 1:50 with water. It is low in nitrogen, but high in phosphorus, sodium and chloride. See the photos in the book for proof that it is not a good solo fertilizer.

The full bucket is left for a couple of weeks, and then the material is either added to a compost pile or to a large worm bin. It is not ready to be used for plants. You could save time and just feed the raw materials directly to the worms. The pH of Bokashi is around 4 (quite acidic), whereas the pH of compost is about 7.

The Eco-enzymes process, also known as Garbage Enzymes, is similar to making Bokashi or sauerkraut, and is popular in some households in Thailand and nearby countries. It reduces the amount of garbage going to the landfill. The system relies on the microbes already on the surface of the foodstuffs. None are added. Anaerobic conditions prevent pathogens from growing.

Enzymes are proteins created in living organisms. They carry out most of the chemical reactions that take place in the cells, including digesting organic matter. To start an eco-enzyme process, combine 3 parts of chopped organic matter, 1 part of sugar and 10 parts of water in a closed container. Open the lid once a week to let excess pressure escape. Wait three months at room temperature. Then separate the liquid from the solid ferment.

The liquid contains acids, alcohols, bacteria, yeast and protease, amylase and lipase enzymes, as well as plant nutrients.  It can be used to fertilize plants, or as a cleaning product with antifungal and antibacterial properties. The solid ferment is similar to Bokashi ferment, and needs composting to be useful to plants.

A commercial compost windrow turner.
Photo by Pam Dawling

Not everyone can make their own compost in large enough quantities. Some municipalities collect compost materials and make compost, which is then sold locally. Because a hot composting process is used, there will be no pathogens or weed seeds. There are no national US standards for compost, so read the small print.

Bits of food packaging, microplastics (less than 5mm in length) and nanoparticles (smaller) will be in municipal compost. A 2021 US EPA study found 300 pieces of microplastics per gram (8,400 per ounce) of food waste collected from grocery stores. Make your own compost if you can!

Chemical contamination is another concern. Pesticide residues will mostly (not entirely) decompose during composting. Leaves from city streets may have picked up oils and car exhaust compounds. Heavy metal contamination can come in with industrial wastes, or sewage sludge (biosolids), and unlike pesticides, will not degrade. Class A biosolids are tested for fecal coliform, salmonella, heavy metals and a few chemical contaminants. They can be sold as suitable for garden use, although not on Organic farms.

Some herbicides are digested by grazing animals, some degrade if composted, some bind to the soil. Some plant growth regulator herbicides, however, pass straight through livestock and kill the plants they land on. The list includes clopyralid, aminopyralid, aminocyclopyrachlor and picloram. Manure, compost, straw or commercial organic fertilizer can be contaminated. Organically produced materials should not contain these toxins.

Mushroom compost is pasteurized after the mushrooms are grown, and sold to vegetable growers. The material does not contain the right nutrients to grow a second round of mushrooms, but is useful for vegetables, with an NPK of 1-0.7-1, with a high calcium level.

Compost tea comes in two main kinds: anaerobic and aerobic. The anaerobic method is to put some organic matter in a container of water. Wait at least a few days, then draw off the liquid. Microbes will have decomposed some of the material and released some nutrients. Some people call this type of tea a “watery extract” to distinguish it from aerobic compost tea, which has air bubbled through it until done. To make “tea” you can use finished compost, weeds, comfrey, vermicompost, manure.

Compost tea does have some benefits in the garden, but not as many as some wishful thinkers believe. An increase in plant growth has been shown in studies in comparison with water. Not surprising! No study has shown better results from compost teas than other plant fertilizers with similar amounts of the same nutrients. It’s cheaper for you to make compost tea than buy fertilizer. But it may be better value for your time and money to use the organic matter you would have made into tea, in some other kind of compost.

Does compost tea build healthier soils? It is mostly water, which doesn’t build soil. The solid matter left behind might improve soil structure if added directly. The tea does not. Adding microbes via compost teas does not increase the number of microbes in the soil, except very short-term. Microbes will die and feed each other, go forth and multiply until the number of various types have rebalanced, back to the same numbers before your intervention. In a 5-year tree study, compost contained 50% more microbes than compost tea did. Skip the tea-making!

If compost teas are sprayed on foliage, some of the microbes may outcompete some existing microbes, including plant pathogens. Some plant diseases (powdery mildew in some cases) were helped by compost tea. Others (gray mold, downy mildew) seem unaffected. Washington State University has done extensive research. Composts vary, tea-making varies, weather varies. Compost tea is far from a cure-all, that much is clear.

Which composting system suits your conditions best? The trench method works for gardens with no space for bins or piles. Eco-enzyme and compost tea are small scale activities. Vermicomposting and Bokashi can be done indoors in winter. A chart compares traditional composting, vermicomposting and Bokashi Ferment, and another chart compares six traditional compost methods.

If your compost is high carbon, with lots of visible leafy or woody particles, spread it on the surface. If dug in, it would need to find plenty of nitrogen to continue decomposing the carbon. If your compost is still “hot”, and not fully mature, don’t dig it in, as it could hurt your plants.

Robert Pavlis tackles the issue of using too much compost, leading to problems with very high phosphorus levels in the soil, by recommending 1” (2.5 cm) of compost a year as a sustainable amount. Commercial compost may contain an NPK ratio of 1-1-1, whereas plants use 3-1-2. Homemade plant-based compost might have an NPK of 3-0.5-1.5. If you use compost to supply all the P the plants need, you will need to supply more N. This is safer than using compost as your main source of N, and building up too much P in the soil.

Excess phosphate gets locked up in the soil, and it could make it hard for your plants to absorb iron and manganese. If this happens you may see interveinal chlorosis. Some crops are good at integrating and removing phosphorus from the soil, so the situation can improve over time, if you minimize the P you are adding each year. If you see no excess phosphate problems, I advocate for not worrying too much! Expect to get some of the nitrogen you need from cover crops, and added fertilizer.

As well as your preferences and conditions, environmental concerns are important to consider. How much carbon is lost as CO2 or as methane? How much nitrogen is lost? If you didn’t compost, what would your alternative be? Would that produce more or less greenhouse gas? Sending organic matter to the landfill is the worst option. In general, the more aerobic your compost process is, the better for the environment. Bokashi and vermicomposting only take the material halfway to being composted. Remember that producing your own compost helps your garden soil and crops, and your wallet.

Robert Pavlis has a new book Microbe Science for Gardeners, coming soon.

Book Review Compact Farms by Josh Volk

Compact farms by Josh Volk, front cover

Compact Farms: 15 Proven Plans for Market Farms on 5 Acres or Less, Josh Volk

Storey Publishing, 2017. 226 pages, 8” x 10”, full color photos and illustrations, charts. $19.95.

This book will be very useful to those preparing to buy or rent land for a small vegetable or flower farm, or those expanding, or downsizing, or re-thinking their small farm model. It is both practical and inspirational. The photos are treasure troves of beauty and ideas. The main part of the book consists of 15 well-organized presentations of a small farm, offering a range of possibilities. The same format is used for each, making comparisons quick and straight-forward. The intro page gives the “vital statistics’ of area in production, location (including whether urban/peri-urban/sub-urban/rural), crops grown, markets and year started. We meet the farmers, and hear a potted history.

The introduction to the notion of thinking small (or “compact” as Josh teaches us to call this scale) explains that compact farms are easily manageable, with many tasks done with hand tools. Start-up and operating costs are reasonable, and money can be invested as success builds. They help build a sense of community, by virtue of being small enough for non-farmers to understand. They usually rely on a diversity of crops to spread risks, rather than an arsenal of pesticides to kill all the problems. The author lists the keys to success for compact farms as paying attention (to the land, crops, weather, seasons, markets, and maintaining resilience); setting yourself apart from large scale growers by growing appropriate crops and adding value; and developing stable systems that work (making improvements over the years, tied to the particulars of the farm and farmers).

Josh Volk, author of Compact Farms

The area in vegetable or cut flower production ranges from Josh Volk’s own 0.15 acres in Oregon to Peregrine Farm’s 4 acres in North Carolina, and includes 2.5 acres of rooftops in New York. Some of the farms also include fruit trees, poultry or bees.

For each farm there is a two-page spread with an attractive hand-drawn farm map with the important items tagged. These layouts will be a big help to anyone pondering how to efficiently pack in all the growing space and facilities needed. A compass North would have been helpful, but usually this can be deduced from the alignment of the greenhouses and hoophouses. If you buy the paperback book you could cut it apart and spread the maps round a table for direct comparisons.

The next, very helpful item is a big chart of the crops harvested each month. Here there is a lot of diversity. Some sell nothing till April or May, and close again at the end of October, some are almost year-round. Some have a full page of crops; one has lettuce year-round and coffee and 5 other crops (that’s in Hawaii). One sells winter crops, because their land is too wet to make an early start in spring. Many ways to produce healthy local food are demonstrated.

After each introduction, there are sections on customers and markets; labor; water; fertility; tools and infrastructure; greenhouses and propagation; seeding and planting; crop care (weed control, season extension, pest and disease control, trellising and pruning); harvesting and post-harvest; sales, communication and record-keeping. Studded throughout are the gems that tell how each farmer has adapted to their situation. Sidebars explain some practices with a bit of detail. How to do flame-weeding, make use of WWOOFers, learn useful skills, make use of hoophouses. Photos (worth more than a thousand words) demonstrate details of cart designs, root washers, a car port used as a wash-pack area, and rods welded onto the hood of a rototiller to mark rows.

The back of the book includes a section called “Nuts and Bolts” with gathered thoughts on planning and designing a farm, all the way from clarifying your goals, listing what you need as a minimum to achieve those goals, what you want to be doing on a day-to-day basis (managing a big crew or having your hands in the soil?), on to what you need to make your farm work (land, location, water quantity and quality, storage, roads, greenhouses, hoophouses, harvest, packing and storage space and equipment, livestock, retail space, office, a restroom near the fields, and housing. Lastly there is a chapter on making it work financially.

The farmers in this book tend towards organic, sustainable, socially conscious, ecological, biological, regenerative. This tendency is always a work in progress, not perfect. We know tractors pollute. These farms consider and value the “triple bottom line” of people, planet and profit, as the three pillars of sustainability. Crop rotation develops healthier soils, stronger crops (therefore potentially profit) and healthier people compared to pesticide-farming. Sustainability does not seek a static state, but continual improvement, so that we leave future generations at least as well off as we are.

Josh Volk was inspired by John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables. . .
Photo by Penguin Random House

John Jeavons of Ecology Action and the ground-breaking book How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine, was an early inspiration for the author. Jeavons promoted sustainability, soil fertility, food with high nutritional density, while using as little space and as few resources as possible. The many detailed charts in his book have been used by generations of growers since, to plan their small farms. Although we might not favor double-digging, as Jeavons once did, his biointensive methods are used around the world to maximize production of healthy local food.

Devising a system that will work very well for your farm will be helped by studying these 15 examples and learning how a decision about one aspect leads to a particular decision about another aspect. The details of each farm might set you thinking about aspects you had not yet considered, or might reassure you that what you see as a major obstacle can be overcome or side-stepped. Tractors are not essential. Pasture for a horse may use as much land as the production area. Don’t plan to farm alone: all the farms in this book have at least two workers. Everyone gets sick sometimes, or has to take a day to go to the city for a dentist appointment.

I wrote a short summary of each farm, but there isn’t space for all that here, so I’m shortening my notes right down. Most of these farms offer 24-36 crops during the season, grow on raised beds, have at least one hoophouse, and a wash/pack area. All have at least two workers, most also with seasonal help. Most use three markets: CSA, farmer’s market, restaurant or wholesale. Here, I’ve focused on the diversity.

Josh starts with his own compact farm (Slow Hand Farm) in Oregon, the smallest in the book, at 0.15 acres. Josh wanted a hand-scale operation where he himself tended all the crops. Josh focused on specialty crops that gave high yields from small spaces, and could take a few days without attention, as he was only on the farm two days a week He designed a CSA with small shares, based on salad crops and a few other items. Deliveries were by a leased Bullitt cargo bike with an electric assist.

Four Season Farm, from their website

The second example is Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch’s famous Four Season Farm in rural coastal Maine. There are two acres in crops and 8 acres in chicken pasture. Eliot is well-known for his ground-breaking books. Employees learn by working with mentors. Poultry are used in rotation to provide fertility for the soil that will later grow vegetables to sell year-round. Everything is very well-thought-out – you can read more in Eliot’s books.

Stephen Cook of the 0.75acre Cook’s Garden in a peri-urban setting in Ohio sells vegetables, plant starts, strawberries, cut flowers and honey. The farm layout has very little unused space. The vegetable beds have 2.5ft paths (considerably wider than most bed systems). Crops are sold May-October, plus asparagus in April. The farmstand has a bell to summon Stephen on his bike. He custom-harvests the vegetables. Stephen does not use winter cover crops, but instead sows buckwheat in empty beds in August, providing forage for his bees until it gets frost-killed. He uses tarps. Initially, he used landscape fabric and old hoophouse plastic that he already had. He is moving to just using landscape fabric. Wide beds require a way of reaching the center: he has a low-lying transplanting cart that straddles the bed, holding the plants and the farmer, moving backwards down the bed, kneeling on the cart while planting.

Linda Chapman, Jocko and the golfcart

Linda Chapman at Harvest Moon Farm in rural Indiana produces vegetables, cut flowers and bedding plants on 2.5 acres. As she already owned the land, her start-up costs were minimal ($400). She enclosed her porch with plastic to make a greenhouse and used an old Gravely garden tractor for tillage. The farm includes blueberries and woodies (cut flowers with woody stems). Linda focuses more on the 39 flower crops in the warm season, then 24 vegetables in the cold months. Almost all annual crops are transplanted, from starts propagated in a 16x30ft well-insulated solar greenhouse attached to the barn. Linda uses an electric golf cart to move trays of plants to the garden and harvest buckets to the barn.

Peregrine Farm, from their website

Peregrine Farm in rural North Carolina has 4 acres in production. Alex and Betsy Hitt grow vegetables, cut flowers, and blueberries. The Hitts created a corporation with 18 friends who invested $80,000 to start the 26acre farm. After the farm started to make a profit, Alex and Betsy were able to buy out all the other shareholders. They continued to live as if they weren’t making money, and now have a retirement fund. Their farm includes twelve seasonal Haygrove tunnels with sets of legs installed in multiple places, enabling rotation. Their 34 vegetables provide crops year-round. Water comes from two ponds, a creek and a well. They used to run 100 turkeys through the quarter-acre rotational blocks, depositing 500lbs manure per block during each stay. This great system had to stop when the local poultry processing plant closed.

Jeff Frank and Kristin Illick operate Liberty Gardens in rural Pennsylvania, growing on 1.5acres of family land which they use for free. January has no sales, and the other eleven months’ production involves 34 crops, peaking in September and October. Cover crops provide the basis of their soil fertility plan. They also make compost from leaf waste and crop residues. Orders for New York are shipped next-day delivery with UPS.

Kealaola Farm, from their website

Kealaola Farm in Hawaii sells lettuce, other greens, beans and coffee grown on 3.8acres by Barry Levine and his rotating crew of six WWOOFers who stay in a row of tents. The crop calendar is very different from other farms in the book: seven year-round crops, with full-size and baby lettuce providing nearly all of the income and occupying most of the space. A bed can grow 6 crops of lettuce in one year, or 18 crops of baby lettuce. Unsurprisingly, there are no greenhouses or hoophouses here. Seed germination happens inside a tent, and seedlings grow to transplanting size on outdoor tables. Living on a remote island, Barry has to improvise when the unexpected happens, or supplies run out sooner than planned.

La Grelinette farm family.
Photo from their website

Les Jardins de la Grelinette in rural Quebec is run by Jean-Martin Fortier and Maude-Hélène Desroches. Jean-Martin is well-known for The Market Gardener, training classes, and work researching and teaching at La Ferme des Quatre-Temps. At les Jardins de la Grelinette, the farmers produce vegetables on 1.5acres. The map shows a very tightly-packed layout of 10 plots of beds, 4 hoophouses, a beeyard and chickens in the orchard. They are pioneers in tarping as a sustainable method of weed control and no-till soil preparation. They have 27 crops for sale from June to October, and a few in November. Purchased compost is used, with many beds growing more than one crop a year. A ten-year rotation plan helps ensure care of the soil. Their delivery van runs on straight vegetable oil.

Zoe Bradbury at Groundswell Farm, OR.
Photo from Ecopreneuring

At Groundswell Farm in rural Oregon, Zoe Bradbury grows 2.5 acres of vegetables, berries and flowers, and 1.5 acres of orchards, leasing family land alongside her sister’s salad greens farm and her mother’s greenhouse business. The women work like a producer cooperative, marketing together. They share a tractor, and handle CSA and restaurant orders, and deliveries collectively. Zoe has a full-time year-round foreman, and does some of her field cultivation with a Belgian draft horse. 32 crops are available during the February to early December season. They water from the creek, using pumps and drip irrigation. The greenhouse has a 4x32ft germination table with water pipes buried in sand. Thermostatically-controlled propane heat the water. Their cool summers mean field crops needing extra warmth are grown in chenilles (poly low tunnels covering two beds).

Mellowfields FArm, Lawrence, Kansas.
Photo from their website.

Mellowfields Urban Farm has 3acres in production in Lawrence, Kansas. Jessie Asmussen and Kevin Prather grow vegetables, culinary herbs and berries. Their farm is divided between two acres leased from the city and another acre at their home. The city’s Common Ground Program (owners of the land) aims to “transform vacant or under-utilized city properties into vibrant sites of healthy food production.” The two farmers took on a part-time harvest worker, and were able to increase market sales 40% above working alone, stay on top of things, and have more family time. Produce is available May to December. The Common Ground Program provides free compost made from city yard waste.

Full Plate Farm, Washington, CSA PIckup art from their website

Full Plate Farm in the peri-urban Ridgefield, Washington area, where Danny Percich grows 3 acres of winter vegetables. The land is very wet in spring, so Danny chose a November-March CSA. April is time off, before planting starts in May. The map shows an intensively used area, including his house, and beds of root crops, alliums, long-season greens, winter squash, fast-growing greens, and popcorn. If you think this limited season does not offer many crop choices, note that they list 30, including stinging nettles in March! Danny works about half- to three-quarters of his time on the farm, saving 4 hours daily for his three children and partner.

Flywheel Farm, Washington farm stand.
Photo from their website

Flywheel Farm in rural Vermont is run by Justin Cote and Ansel Ploog. They (alone) are growing vegetables, culinary herbs, eggs and rabbits on two acres. They negotiated a five-year rolling lease with the owners, and decided to start on half the land and do that well. They live elsewhere. Their crops are available late May to early November. The farmers built a well-designed compact wash/pack area, including a 5x7ft cooler. Ansel has included a page “Why We Farm” that explains how they aim to be part of a vibrant sustainable regional agricultural economy. Receiving appropriate financial compensation for farming work (done efficiently) is one of their goals.

Box of melons from Leap Frog Farm.
Photo from their website.

Leap Frog Farm is 2.5acres of vegetables and 3 acres of fruit trees in rural California, farmed by Annie Hehner. She keeps goats for her own dairy supply. She lives in a simple house on the land, and pays rent to her parents for the cultivated land. The space includes a hay field, and orchards of young almonds, peaches, Asian pears, plums, and walnuts. Annie hires a friend to work full-time with her. Sales have a marked seasonality of 15 January-May crops, 14 June-December crops and several that mature in November. Annie borrows farm equipment from neighbors, and does a lot of improvising. She built a straw bale cooler that uses a CoolBot device in summer.

Cully Neighborhood Farm banner

At Cully Neighborhood Farm in the city of Portland, Oregon, Matt Gordon grows vegetables on 0.5 acres for restaurants, a 40-member CSA and a juice company. He found some open land belonging to a church and school, and arranged a lease, including delivering some excess produce to the church’s food pantry. Matt works 40 hours a week during most of the season, and 20 hours from December to February. June-August he employs an apprentice for 30 hours a week. There is an outdoor classroom and a children’s garden of 12 boxed beds, run separately, but supported by the farm. Matt (and apprentice) grow 36 different crops, distributed May-late November.

Brooklyn Grange Farm.
Photo from their website

Brooklyn Grange is a rooftop farm in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, growing 2.5 acres of mostly intensive vegetables. The farmers are Ben Flanner, Anastasia Cole Plakias, Gwen Schantz and Chase Emmons. At last! I was uneasy that all the photos of farmers so far in the book are white! Here we have a large diversity of farmers. Not particularly visible in the book, because the profile has no farmer photo, and the photos of workers all look white. But the Brooklyn Grange website shows many workers, and is worth a visit to see the roof top farm videos too.  Their first rooftop, in Long Island City, is 6 stories up, and the second (in Brooklyn Navy Yard) is a dizzying 12 stories above ground.  Everything goes up and down in freight elevators, although during construction they used cranes. They sell microgreens year-round, and 22 other crops May-November. There are 4 full-time farmers and extra seasonal workers. The 12” deep soil is light and fluffy, so hand tools do most of the work. They do sometimes carefully use a rototiller. A shipping container on the roof provides office space and a cooler.

This is a very practical book, and as I often say about farming books, the price of the book will steer you towards success and save you costly poor decisions.

 

 

 

Book Review Plant Science for Gardeners by Robert Pavlis

Cover of Plant Science for Gardeners

Plant Science for Gardeners: Essentials for Growing Better Plants, Robert Pavlis, New Society Publishers, June 2022. 224 pages, 6” x 9”, photos, drawings, diagrams. $22.99.

This is a valuable, concise, accessible book for home gardeners, homesteaders, market gardeners, small-scale and large-scale crop farmers. As I noted about Robert Pavlis’s first book in this series: Soil Science: “I recommend this book to all gardeners who have hesitated to open a soil science text for fear of dry, incomprehensible overloads of numbers.” The same is true of Plant Science. Robert Pavlis is a very good science writer. He disentangles false myths from facts, and teaches us how to make science-based decisions and grow healthier, more productive plants. I reviewed Soil Science for Gardeners, in 2020. As well Plant Science, he has a newer book: Compost Science for Gardeners, and coming soon, Microbe Science for Gardeners.

By understanding the science, we will better able to base our decisions on actual conditions, even as those conditions change in the climate chaos we are now dealing with. Our one-time rule “plant garlic in the third week of October” has gone by the wayside as the soil stays warmer later. We now plant garlic around the end of the first week of November. The author has a blog, called gardenmyths.com, that has had over 14 million visitors and discusses hundreds of garden myths.

After introducing Plant Basics, we get a tour of roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds, and then the whole plant. Woody plants have their own chapter, as do environmental factors, selecting seeds, vegetative reproduction, and plant names. Each chapter includes sidebars exploding common gardening myths (six in the roots chapter!) and tips for assessing plant problems and finding solutions.

After absorbing this book, you will avoid wasting money on faddish garden products and techniques. You can marvel at the information that plant roots excrete chemicals to attract beneficial microbes which then ward off root pathogens.

You can fill any gaps in your knowledge of the xylem and phloem systems for transporting water and nutrients around the plant; and what actually happens during photosynthesis, when the energy of light converts carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen. When the sun goes down, photosynthesis stops, but roots continue to absorb water and nutrients, and the plant continues to grow and form flowers and leaves.

The awe-inspiring photo of root hairs makes it obvious that they increase the surface area of the roots by an order of magnitude. In this chapter you can also learn to distinguish between fibrous roots (lettuce), taproots (carrots), tuberous roots (sweet potatoes) and adventitious roots (growing out of the stem or leaves, such as on tomatoes).

Roots need a pH between 5.5 and 7.0; temperature between 40°F (4°C) and 90°F (32°C); easy access to nutrients, provided the levels do not become toxic; sufficient air and water.

Learn the real truth about soil mycorrhizal fungi – buying them is a waste of money! Learn about nitrogen-fixing bacteria (both free-living, and symbiotic bacteria in nodules on roots of legumes and certain other plants). The bacteria do not provide “free” nitrogen, but exchange it for photosynthetic compounds made by the plants. Annual plants excrete 40% of their photosynthates and other plants typically provide around 30%. Some of these exudates attract mycorrhizal fungi.

Some plants excrete 50% of the fixed carbon from photosynthesis through their roots into the soil, where microbes feed on them and die, after producing more microbes. The dead microbes provide lots of nutrients in the “soup” around the roots. Some of these nutrients can boost plant growth; some attract nitrogen-fixing bacteria; some inhibit the development of pest nematodes. Plants attract and herd the right microbe food sources towards their roots; they also change the pH around the roots, making insoluble minerals more available. They produce fewer sugars when they no longer need as many microbes. This is amazing plant chemistry in action. It is not a sign that plants are “intelligent” in our usual meaning of the word.

The chapter on stems will help you distinguish herbaceous and woody stems; vascular bundles of phloem and xylem; nodes and internodes; trichomes (stem hairs, scales or spines); terminal and lateral buds.

Rhizomes are not roots, but fleshy, modified stems growing laterally in the soil. Terminal buds develop along the rhizomes at the nodes, and then shoot upwards. When a rhizome is broken up, each piece can become an independent plant. Stolons (runners) are also a type of modified stem, growing horizontally on the soil surface, rather than underground. The baby plants are clones of the mother plant and can be separated to replant elsewhere.

Strawberry plants in their second year. Runners from mother plants create new baby plants. Photo Kathryn Simmons

Vines may curl clockwise or counter-clockwise, despite myths that abound. 90% of vines curl anti-clockwise as viewed from above. Cucumbers can curl either way. Pole beans and runner beans both curl counterclockwise. If you are giving your beans a helping hand, and you are right-handed, you may need to work against your instinct to twine them clockwise.

Leaves have upper and lower epidermis layers, sandwiching the mesophyll and the veins. The epidermis of some plants has extensions such as hairs, that secrete sticky, bad-tasting or smelly substances that can provide a defense against insects and other animals. The mesophyll is where photosynthesis happens. The surfaces of a leaf (especially the lower side) have fairly large openings called stomata. These control the water and air passing out, in response either to the internal state of the cells, or the dryness of the soil.

Pepper plant with aphids and ants farming them.
Photo Pam Dawling

If you are spraying soft-bodied insect pests on your plants, the reason to use insecticidal soap made from potassium salts, rather than detergents like dish “soap” or bar soap (made from sodium salts) is to protect the waxy cuticle on the leaves. Sodium salt soaps and detergents can strip off all the wax coating, leaving the plant more vulnerable to insects.

Hardening off transplants for a couple of weeks before setting them out in the garden gradually acclimates the indoor-grown plants to brighter, windier, hotter or colder outdoor conditions. The leaf cuticle can grow thicker, the stomata smaller or fewer, the plant can grow smaller, tougher leaves. Read this chapter to learn why purple- and red-leaved plants grow slower, and why brassicas can show purple leaf coloration in cold and dry conditions (phosphorus isn’t moving fast enough).

The chapter on flowers provides an introduction to botany for those who have not met the information before, and a refresher to those who have. It includes information about night-length sensitivity (often called day-length sensitivity, although it is the length of the dark period that acts as the trigger to flowering), along with vernalization (a cold period preceding the night-length of the right duration.) In specific situations and climates, flowering may be triggered by strong far-red light, heavy rainfall, or sunlight intensity.

Outdoor lighting in your garden can interfere with blooming triggers. Red light is the most critical. If you have outdoor lights, it’s best to turn them off when you go indoors at night, to enable plants to get enough darkness.

Plants will not have more blooms if you give them extra phosphorus! “All parts of the plant need all the nutrients. An excess of one nutrient, like phosphate, does not make the plant grow better, nor does it cause a plant to bloom more. Don’t waste your money on bloom booster type products”

This chapter is mostly about plants grown for their flowers, rather than as vegetables. As a vegetable grower with a bit of a background in botany, I skimmed this chapter. Many vegetable growers also grow fruit trees or cut flowers, and this book covers all the basics.

The next chapter is about fruit. Fruit protects the developing seed, provides suitable humidity for the seeds, and sometimes provides nutrients for the seeds too. If the taste of the fruit attracts animals to eat the fruit, the seeds might then get dispersed further afield than if the fruit simply dropped near the tree.

Tomato sideshoot – pinch them out or leave them to grow? Photo Wren Vile

Should you sucker tomatoes? See the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/1p6TC4-hj5E. Suckering is a type of pruning, where side-shoots are pinched out while small. Some gardeners never sucker tomatoes, and deal with the ensuing mass of greenery and fruit. Some prune hard, especially for greenhouse tomatoes, leaving only one main stem. Others take a middle road, and let two or three main stems grow. The author has compiled a table, comparing three degrees of suckering (none, plants sprawled; none, plants in cages; single stem, all suckers removed). What are your tomato-growing goals? Hard suckering reduces the number of potential fruits on each plant, allowing you to plant closer together, increasing your total yield. Suckering also produces an earlier crop, as does any kind of staking, compared to sprawling your tomatoes on the ground. Suckering achieves earliest fruit, tidiness, large fruit, least chance of pests and diseases. These benefits come with the costs of much extra time on maintenance, medium numbers of fruit and lower yield.

The next chapter puts all the plant parts together and looks at the whole plant. While there are features common to all parts of all plants, there are also differences. The author divides plants into four types: annuals, biennials, trees and shrubs. Another difference explained in this chapter is that between determinate and indeterminate growth patterns. Some plants stop growing at some point. Determinate plants grow to a genetically pre-programmed size, then stop getting bigger. Most deciduous trees are determinate – each species has a maximum height.

Indeterminate plants are not genetically limited in size. They may be environmentally limited: tomato plants die with the frost. Some indeterminate plants (some evergreen trees) do continue growing, but the rate of growth slows to perhaps ¼” (6 mm) per year, an amount you might not notice. Determinate vegetable types (of peas, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes) are often called “bush types.” Despite labels, there are not determinate and indeterminate types of potatoes. This is a myth that I fell for. All potatoes are determinate. Some are faster-maturing than others.

Early September photo of hay mulched June-planted potatoes. They’re all determinates!
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Some plants go “dormant,” meaning there is no visible activity above ground. They are not truly dormant, as the roots are still active. Fertilize plants when they are actively growing, not when they appear to be dormant. You can’t usually “wake them up”, although you can overcome summer dormancy of grasses to some extent by watering a lot. After the summer solstice, the increasing night length signals deciduous shrubs to start the complex process of shedding leaves and going dormant.

The cycles of water in a plant are fascinating, and well-described. Water travels from the roots up the xylem channels to the leaves. As the leaves transpire (give off water), a suction force pulls water molecules upwards. The surface tension of the water, caused by the shape of the molecules, causes them to stick to each other as chains of magnets do. Once water leaves the xylem, it moves from a place of high water concentration to a place of lower water content, in a process called osmosis. Water flows towards cells that have less water.

A third water movement process is called guttation. You’ve probably seen it as beads of water hanging on the edges of leaves, in times of high humidity, such as early morning. The roots have absorbed too much water and sent it upwards to leaves that cannot hold any more, and cannot transpire water while the humidity is so high.

Nutrients also move through the xylem from the roots to the rest of the plant. Once at their destination, small, mobile nutrients such as ammonium, potassium, phosphate, and magnesium ions, can move through the phloem cells to other parts of the plant.  Larger molecules, like calcium, iron, manganese, zinc, boron, sulfur, and copper ions, are immobile, showing as color changes in older leaves. Mobile nutrients move out of the leaves in the fall, causing the color changes we see. Plant biology is complicated and there is no simple way to determine which nutrients are deficient in your soil, by looking at the leaves. This is another myth I had bought into, but found surprisingly hard to make use of! One fact is that deficiencies of mobile nutrients show up in the older leaves first, then move to the younger leaves. Deficiencies of immobile nutrients show up in the new growth.

Foliar feeding is widely misunderstood. Nutrients absorbed from foliar sprays enter not via the stomata, but through the transcuticular pores. Heard of those? These are small holes admitting small molecules only, in small quantities. Only 15-20% of nutrients applied to leaves actually get absorbed. Roots are much better at absorbing the large quantities of nutrients plants require.  Save money and get better results, by fertilizing the roots!

Sunflowers turn to face the sun.
Photo Pam Dawling

This book provides explanations of how plants respond to damaged leaves and roots; grow taller; turn to follow the sun (until the seeds are set); and respond to gravity, growing into the typical shape for that plant. When light levels drop (as fall arrives, or after transplanting in shade), plants focus on the more essential root and leaf development, and stop making flowers. Nothing compensates for a shortage of light.

Perennial woody plants are the focus of the next chapter. Many perennial herbs like sage, thyme and lavender are sometimes simply called perennials, masking the secret of good care for them: prune them as shrubs. Learn about the structure of woody stems, the existence of lenticels (openings in the bark) and the differences between softwood and hardwood cuttings. Most trees do not need staking after planting, instructs Robert Pavlis, as he explodes a few more myths. Here are directions for removal of tree branches for best recovery. It doesn’t involve any paint.

Apical dominance is explained, along with a photo of a fruit tree trained flat on a wall, an effect created by managing apical dominance – bending down leaders where you want to create a new branch. Positioning the apical bud lower than the other buds lets the next one back grow out.

Environmental factors are discussed next, including how plants adapt to environmental changes. US winter-hardiness climate zones are explained, along with the limitations of this classification. Dave’s Garden (https://davesgarden.com) is recommended as a reliable site for its classifications of hardiness of various plants. Read about how plants cope with the cold. Soil temperature can make a lot of difference to plant survival. Hence the usefulness of organic mulches (including snow), and of hoophouses. Sugars, fats, proteins and minerals in the cells act as antifreeze and prevent the cell liquids freezing until the air temperature is colder than a mere frost. Buy hardy plants, hardy varieties, give them enough water.

Plants actually have more difficulty acclimating to heat than to cold. Water loss, lower photosynthesis and respiration rates all take a toll. The author explains that plants, animals (including people, I assume), and microorganisms, produce proteins called heat shock proteins, that act as a protective coating around enzymes and nucleic acids. Leaf rolling minimizes exposure to the sun. Hairs on leaves provide some shade (every bit helps!).

Young sweet corn with a sprinkler for overhead watering.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

For new gardeners, figuring out when the soil has dried enough to require watering is one of the hardest things to learn. Push your finger into the soil, and if the soil feels dry, water. Not otherwise. When you do water, water deeply. Shallow watering produces only shallow roots, leaving deeper roots to die. Shallow roots are not drought-resistant.

Climate change is more than warmer average temperatures. It includes increased frequency and severity of droughts, heavy precipitation, strong winds. Plant a diversity of crops, and watch how they do. Consider plants that grow on riverbanks, those that grow in dry places, sites with high elevation and harsh conditions.

Chapter 10 is a guide to understanding and starting seeds. Some seeds are “recalcitrant” (slow to sprout). Once fully mature, some seed can remain dormant for a very long time. Some requires light to break dormancy; some a particular ratio of one plant hormone to another; some need the seed coating to be degraded before germination can happen (walnut trees are a good example); some need fire or a hot temperature (redbud trees). Most vegetables (and 80% of all seeds) are “orthodox” sprouters, and can be stored for that year’s use in paper packets at room temperature. For use in future years, make sure they are mature and dry, then store in an air-tight container under refrigeration. Recalcitrant seeds need different conditions – read the book.

Tomato transplants in pots, ready to plant out in mild weather.
Photo Wren Vile

For starting seeds there are links to a series of five videos covering pots, damp paper towels, and special outdoor winter-sowing methods. In this chapter are pros and cons for each, and tips on which method is best for different situations.

Chapter 11 includes information on plant genetics, heirlooms, hybrids, and GMO seeds. Unlike me, the author considers GMO seeds a safe way to produce food. Be reassured that GMO vegetable seeds are not available to home gardeners, being sold only in large quantities and requiring the purchaser to sign a contract. White Russet potatoes, and very small amounts of summer squash and zucchini may have reached retail sales. (https://www.cfsanappsexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?set=NewPlantVarietyConsultations)

See also https://foodinsight.org/genetically-modified-organisms-and-our-food-supply/

Chapter 12 covers vegetative reproduction, which is energetically less demanding on the plant than producing flowers and seeds. The downside is that all plants produced vegetatively are genetically identical. When stolons or rhizomes break, the fragments can grow as separate plants. Bulblets, bulbils, cormels are forms of baby bulbs or corms that can grow into new plants. Gardeners use vegetative methods to increase the numbers of plants for the next season. Layering, stem and root cuttings, leaf cuttings, root division – you can learn these from this book. Be skeptical of homemade “rooting hormones”. Willow water does contain low levels of rooting hormones; small amounts of aspirin, cinnamon, peroxide, may help control fungal or other infections or help root hairs grow. None of aloe vera juice, vitamin C, apple cider vinegar has any scientific evidence whatsoever, so don’t waste your time on these.

Chapter 13 is on plant names, and explains the conventions used when providing Latin botanical names. Conventions for naming hybrids are explained. The distinction between cultivar and variety is made clear. Varieties are naturally occurring in the wild. Cultivars are human-bred, including both hybrids and established open pollinated types. If you develop your own strain, you should give it a unique cultivar name. Don’t reuse a name already in existences, as this is inaccurate and leads to confusion.

Fruit for the Month: April, and all-year summary

Reliable rhubarb, the earliest fruit. Photo Bridget Aleshire

This is the last of my monthly series about small fruits that grow in the Mid-Atlantic and other places with a similar climate. Here are links to each of the other posts:

March: Rhubarb

February: Blueberries

January: Grapes

December: Quince

November: Persimmons

October: Fall Raspberries

September: Watermelons

August: Grapes

July: Melons

June: Blueberries

May: Strawberries

The focus fruit for April is still rhubarb, as it was in March

The book, Rhubarbaria by Mary Prior.

I have just learned about a fascinating book, Rhubarbaria, by Mary Prior, published in the UK by Prospect Books 2009. (The book is available in the US, both new and used.)

This is the first British book devoted to rhubarb recipes through the ages, from around the world, as well as rhubarb history. Rhubarb was first grown in Mongolia, Siberia and the Himalayan foothills, for the medicinal uses of the root. Gerald’s Herbal of 1597 says that the dried root was imported to Britain for use as a blood purifier. Early culinary uses are as likely to be with fish or meat, as they are for desserts. See March’s recipe idea which combines roasted rhubarb with grilled mackerel.

As a dessert item, rhubarb became a familiar staple after the enslavement of people in the Caribbean on sugar plantations led to cheap sugar, from around 1840. The common or slang name for rhubarb in the US, is pie plant (Merriam-Webster dates this name from 1838). In England, the Victorian royal chef Charles Francatelli, included rhubarb pie in his Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (1852)

A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes

Rhubarb is slug-proof, and resistant to both drought and flooding.

Other small fruits still available in April

Dried and frozen fruits, jams, jellies, chutneys, other preserves, or even stored apples and pears are all we are likely to have, apart from buying imports. Remember that vegetables are at least as nutritious as fruit, but simply have fewer sugars. The vitamin C content of green leafy vegetables is as high as oranges.

Other fruit care in April in the mid-Atlantic

Weed and mow aisles between fruit bushes as needed. Provide 1” (2.5cm) of water each week if nature doesn’t. Finish pruning any fruit bushes and canes you haven’t yet dealt with.

If you plant strawberries in spring, you need to pinch off the flowers the first year, to strengthen the plants for a good yield in year two.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Pinch flowers off any new spring-planted strawberries. (If you planted in the fall, your plants should have big enough roots to support a harvest without stunting the plants for the second year.) Cover strawberries if frost threatens after flowering has started.

We used to have a coordinated plan of rowcover use that minimized rolling up and storing rowcovers, only to need them again soon after. We would move the rowcovers and sticks from overwintered or spring planted spinach directly to the strawberry beds before flowering. By that point, the cold-hardy spinach was better off without rowcover. We would already have moved rowcover from turnips, senposai, and early cabbage as needed for broccoli, until the end of April, when the broccoli would have hardened off and benefit more from ambient temperatures. By that point, the watermelons needed rowcover. In mid-April we would take rowcover from kale, collards, and early lettuce for the frost-tender crops.

Two rows of floricane raspberries with a willow and grapes in the background. Photo Kathryn Simmons

Thin raspberries to six canes per foot (30 cm) of row. For beds wider than 1 row, thin to 2” (5 cm) apart.

If you care about large grapes, it is time to thin the fruitlets in the bunches, we grow mostly Concord types, which make delicious juice (especially after storing a few months to mature). We don’t thin at all.

Special Topic for April: Books about Fruits

See my book reviews of

Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts by Levy and Serrano

Farming on the Wild Side, The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery, Nancy and John Hayden

The Berry Grower, by Blake Cothron

Pawpaws, The Complete Growing and Marketing Guide by Blake Cothron

For the Love of Pawpaws by Michael Judd

If you have a suggestion for the topic for the upcoming annual monthly series on a type of food crop, please leave a comment.

Book Review: The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook, Zach Loeks

The front cover of The Two-Wheel Tractor by Zach Loeks.

Book Review: The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook

Small-Scale Equipment and Innovative Techniques for Boosting Productivity, Zach Loeks, New Society Publishers, 2023. 232 pages, $39.99.

Although there is a definite “Tilling-is-bad” mantra in some circles, recent no-till books have spoken in favor of less tilling, rather than never any tilling. Even those in favor of minimizing tilling understand that some circumstances call for tilling, so let’s do it well. This very practical manual will help us deeply understand our two-wheel tractors and get the best out of them while giving them our best. Mindful, good use of machinery is important! This book will be useful to gardeners, homesteaders, landscapers, and small-scale farmers.

One of the author’s goals with this book is “to return the two-wheel tractor to its rightful place as a small-scale solution for land management, especially for diversified and highly profitable stewardship of farms, homesteads, and landscape.” Bigger is not necessarily better. Intensive agriculture can bring more profits than extensive acres of one crop.

Too many of us who use two-wheel tractors (still called rototillers by some, but in actuality two-wheeled tractors are much more versatile than that), look at the manual only when things go wrong. This book gives us the chance to really understand our machines. These are machines that we can maintain ourselves with regular tools. Knowledge is power.

Two-wheel tractors are affordable for new growers, easy to maneuver in small plots of different crops, adaptable with various pieces of equipment for many different cultivation tasks. They have a Power Take Off (PTO) and hitch system similar to four-wheel tractors, and they can connect to multiple implements. Those machines with the ability to rotate the handlebars can be used with a choice of rear-mounted or front-mounted implements.

Two-wheel tractors compact the soil much less than four-wheel tractors, and can use less fuel.

This book explains the various types of two-wheel tractors (BCS, Planet Junior, Ferrari, Grillo and others), so that you can buy the one best suited to the work you need it for. There is help in figuring out how much horse-power you need. The page on safety design will help those planning long hours of operation to get a durable machine. After reading this book, I think you will be able to increase the life of your machine (and maybe your knees).

A raised bed prepared with our BCS 732 and  Berta Rotary Plow, with some lettuce transplants under shadecloth.
Photo Pam Dawling

There are plenty of clear color photos and drawings to help you make sense of it all. As in real-life farming in the US, nearly all of the people in the drawings appear to be white males. It’s hard to be certain when everyone is wisely wearing all the protective gear needed, but I wish the farmers had been more diverse! There is a deep look into the functions of each kind of implement, so you can be informed when choosing between a rotary plow and a furrower, for example.  “Remember, equipment decision-making is where growers can make the biggest mistakes or have the greatest successes. Having the right equipment can revolutionize your homestead or farm, but the wrong equipment choices can begin to dictate how you grow instead of facilitating your chosen production.” One example is your preferred bed-width, and how well that matches the width of your equipment.

The book starts with a history of farming with horses and then their mechanical replacements. Next comes discussion of two-wheeled tractor essential components, types, and the benefits of each. The third chapter talks about specific accessories and adjustments you can make. This is followed by helpful discussion of which equipment is best suited to which scale and type of operation, and also the stage of development of the enterprise. Are you starting up, scaling up, or doing what Zach calls pro-ing up? Keep your later goals in mind and buy equipment now that will fit with what you need next.

There is a good chapter on maintenance and care. Be sure to do regular checks and maintenance, and provide good care and storage, starting with day one. Keep a special toolkit for timely repairs. This chapter includes recommended brands of maintenance supplies, a checklist of maintenance tips, and winter storage preparations.

For me, the main value of the book is in the first 5 chapters and chapter 8 on maintenance and care. The other two chapters will appeal most to permaculturists who like the classification of things and spaces into guilds, and circular diagrams. There is information there for everyone on techniques that could save you time and effort.

I learned valuable understanding in the “Two-Wheel Tractor Essential” chapter. I wasn’t raised on a farm and have approached machinery with a “need-to-know” style. I know which way to set switches but forget which setting of the choke is “in” and which is “out.” Now I understand better. Likewise, I followed the machinery manual in clipping the “operator presence control” and clutch into the U-shaped wire clip when putting the machine in the shed, but I didn’t know why it was important to do that. I passed the instruction on to all the people I trained, but noticed they frequently didn’t do it. The reason is to prevent a stuck clutch, which can happen if the two cone parts of the clutch are left touching while the machine is stored. Disengaging the clutch leaves a space between the two cones, so they don’t stick together.

Zach lists eleven Two-Wheel Tractor Benefits, including that the range of engine sizes gives us the ability to avoid over-large engines for small tasks. Another from the list is that two-wheeled tractors are easy to maneuver in small spaces, between diverse crops, including the ability to make tight turns.

There is a fundamental difference between multi-functional 2-wheel tractors with a PTO, and those without, which are mainly for row-crop cultivation, and can be made with smaller engines and a higher clearance for tall crops. The latter crop includes Planet Junior, Tuffy, and Tilmor Ox. The Tilmor Power Ox now has a wide range of cultivation tools made by Thiessen.

Multi-functional tractors with a PTO are more widely used than the cultivator types. Those such as BCS with reversible handlebars, can be used for front-mounted mowers and rear-mounted earth-moving implements. They have a lower clearance than cultivating tractors and therefore are more stable because of the lower center of gravity.

We use our BCS to incorporate cover crops and compost in preparation for replanting.
Photo Pam Dawling

The section on tractor components includes labeled bird’s-eye-view diagrams of three BCS models. How much horsepower do you need? Various brands and sizes of engine are compared, and the pros and cons of each are discussed. Some pieces of equipment need more horsepower than others, so before buying anything, consider all the implements you might need. There is also a page on choosing and using used engines.

I had not considered the value of being able to lower the handlebars for more compact storage or to lift the tractor when using heavy pieces of equipment. Likewise, we here have all been in the habit of walking directly behind the tiller for better ergonomics, and have not fully explored the benefits of turning the handlebars slightly to one side. BCS handlebars are very easy to adjust!

There is design box explaining which gear to use for best results with which job. There is a bit of a human tendency to think faster is better. It ain’t necessarily so! Likewise, pressing down on the handlebars to get deeper tilling will cause the tractor to “walk” on its tines, removing the center of power from the engine and wheels (where the operator is in control). If you need deeper tilling, set the depth deeper! The mechanics of the tractors and implements are very clearly explained.

Tractors with a differential drive can make tighter turns when you unlock one wheel, meaning only one wheel is then being driven. The differential should be locked for field work (greater stability) and only unlocked for turning or negotiating tight spaces.

I like understanding the tractor better. I now appreciate what a wonderful thing a PTO is, and don’t take it for granted. It enables us to power a range of implements from the engine, rather than simply being ground-driven, or pulled. Having both color photos and hand-drawn diagrams makes it easier to understand the machines.

I don’t plan to need wheel weights, front weights or implement weights, but I know where to turn if I end up needing to know. Likewise, if we need a different space between the wheels, I can find out how to do it. I did learn that our rotary plow would work better on our BCS 732 if we had slightly larger wheels. Choosing the implements is only half of the job, the other half is learning how to get best use under your circumstances.

Using the Berta rotary plow to make paths between our raised beds.
Photo Pam Dawling

Safety is about design, maintenance, operation and protective gear. In this book you can read about the safety features designed into your BCS or other two-wheeled tractor, a list of operating safety tips, and a list of protective clothing and equipment.

The next chapter is about implements and their uses, and instructions for getting them on and off the tractor, with good clear photos. I’m a big fan of the BCS Quick-hitch. We graduated from one BCS with a quick-hitch, tiller, hiller and rotary brush mower, to two BCS machines. We kept one set up for mowing, one for tilling, but each had a quick-hitch and so could be called in as a backup if one machine was down.

Zach addresses the misconceptions around tilling. All working of the soil is a form of tillage, however you do it. No-till and low-till methods reduce tillage. But you cannot successfully (organically) eliminate all earthworking from a farm. If the soil was not tilled previously by someone else, you will need to do primary tillage to open new land. Tarping will not deal with soil compaction. You can move towards the 4-S tillage principles: Seldom, Shallow, Softly (minimal depth?) and Sorted (patterned, meaning leaving a patchwork of untilled areas while tilling the areas you need soon). (There might be some specialized permaculture terminology there that I didn’t quite understand.)

The chapter on equipment decision-making alone is worth the price of the book. It can save expensive purchasing mistakes. Chose implements matching the scale of your enterprise (bearing in mind planned future expansion). How many acres do you have in actual production? This is a more important number than the total acreage of your farm. Market growers working more than 2-3 acres might need a two-wheeled cultivating tractor as well as a multipurpose BCS-type tractor. They may even need a 4-wheeled tractor.

Consider “investment” as a concept including space, time, energy and money. Growing more extensively will use more space, while saving time by using a bigger tractor. That will involve more fuel use (energy) and more money. Trade-offs. Zach has a chart of three scales of enterprise and the tools needed for each of four tasks for each scale. The discussion of extensive versus intensive agriculture shows that either type can be done on a small acreage (consider an acre of garlic in rows 6” apart (intensive) or 15” apart (extensive)). Intensive agriculture can bring in higher profits from the same space without requiring investment in more equipment. The investment there is of more time. Extensive land management uses more land, but less time, and it can save on money too, as when hay, mulches and green manures are grown on site, rather than bought-in.

Author Zach Loeks

Projects can develop and grow over time, changing the scale and the needs of the operation. Be mindful of your goals, and prepare a “Static Goal” rather than do continuous random expansions. When you reach the static-state goal, everything should be in balance, equilibrium. Zach then leads us through an example towards a static state 3-acre farm. For example, better to buy a 30” tiller at start-up than the initially-adequate 26”.

Here the book dips more towards permaculture terms, diagrams and ideas for a chapter. The information on deciding which implements you need is accessible, and you can either embrace or ignore the guild terminology. The glossary at the end will save you from getting lost in the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Some of the same implements are mentioned more than once, to fit the format. There are many pieces of equipment I did not even know of.

Other aspects of farming to consider (apart from intensive/extensive) are profit per square foot and resiliency. Diversity of crops and crop rotation can provide resiliency, but continuous fancy lettuce grown with bought-in inputs can make a higher money profit.

Chapter 5 looks in detail at several example farms, from a backyard gardener to several market gardens. Interesting narratives, with drawings of soil prep stages using various equipment. And separately, lists of tasks to be undertaken. I started by assuming the numbered tasks correlated with the drawings, but it’s not as precise as that. There is a useful “Design Box” on cultivation for row-based planting, useful to those of us who haven’t tackled that yet. Another is about tree nurseries, a side of farming that doesn’t get many manuals (that I’ve seen).

In chapter 6, there are instructions for farming on terraces, and then the permaculture “Permabeds” system. In this chapter you can also learn how to add wheel extensions.

Chapter 7 starts with ways to clear new land, micro-plow it, and form beds with the formidable BCS power ridger, which goes on the front of the tractor. Using tarps to get rid of weeds is also briefly explained, and shown in a series of photos. Zach recommends making life simple by choosing five variations of row spacing, centered on a constant center row.

Chapter 8 is a mini-manual on maintenance and care, another useful section written in a very accessible way. The tool kit drawings are helpful, as is the advice to keep the tractor tools in a special bag on a special shelf, ready to grab if you need to take it down the field. There’s a good list of maintenance supplies, including recommended brand names. There is information on winter storage, and specific instructions for checking and tightening cables, changing Honda engine oil, understanding oils (making it more likely we’ll use the right kind).

Book Review Practical No-Till Farming: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Organic Vegetable and Flower Growing by Andrew Mefferd

Front cover of Practical No-Till Farming by Andrew Mefferd

Book Review Practical No-Till Farming: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Organic Vegetable and Flower Growing by Andrew Mefferd, New Society Publishers, November 2022, 240 pages, $34.99. 

This is a valuable quick-start guide to small-scale and medium-scale no-till farming, for which many growers will be grateful.  Get a tarp, get started and learn as you go, reading this and Andrew Mefferd’s earlier book, Organic No-Till Farming Revolution as needed. Practical No-Till Farming cuts to the chase with a decision-making matrix for choosing the best methods at each transition point, methods that are regenerative, efficient and earn you a living.

Done well, organic no-till growing can produce more for the time you put in, while improving the biodiversity in the soil. Yields can also be higher per area, while weed management is easier and to add to the benefits, you can sequester carbon in the soil at the same time.

WHAT IS NO-TILL?

The author’s definition of no-till includes any method that doesn’t invert the soil profile. There are no-till farmers who go further and avoid growing root crops, because digging them out resembles tillage. Everyone sets their own limits. Andrew encourages all to try reducing tillage, as a step to good care of the soil.

There are many no-till methods, including covering with silage tarps, mulching with cardboard, straw, or compost. And there are many opinions on the best way to get started. Practical No-Till Farming will help you choose the methods best suited to your situation. This book includes how to:

  • assess no-till options for your farm, considering soil, climate, and the crops you want to grow;
  • balance the pros and cons, and assess the materials and the relative costs of popular no-till methods;
  • use a decision-making matrix for choosing good no-till methods at each stage of your journey;
  • maximize productivity of no-till production;
  • deal with bindweed, symphylans, and other difficult weeds and pests;
  • make a task list of what to do and when, for each no-till method;
  • learn from Andrew’s experience of organic vegetable and flower no-till market farming.

WHY DO NO-TILL?

The first 70 pages of the book, approximately, are full with the Why of No-Till. The Why is followed by about 130 pages of the How of No-Till, including advantages and disadvantages of tilling and no-till, tarping, mulching, cropping strategies, transitions between crops, and good crops to focus on. You can even skip the Why section and go straight to the How section (although you’ll probably want to come back later).

It has been three years since Andrew’s first no-till book, The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution, and many kinds of no-till are underway, (some for 10,000 years): lasagna gardening, no-dig, and permanent mulch. What’s fairly new is doing this on a farm scale rather than a backyard scale. Chemical no-till farming has taken off in the US, paired with GMO crops that don’t die when sprayed with herbicides. Without tillage, there is less soil erosion, but the runoff water from chemical no-till fields has high levels of herbicides and pesticides, so the environment is far from improved. Many organic, sustainable, regenerative farmers want to use no-till methods without pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, in order to take better care of the soil and the wider environment.

We take care of the soil biology so it can cycle nutrients to our plants. Soil micro-organisms release nutrients that would otherwise stay locked up in the soil. We can consciously farm these little creatures, ensuring they have conditions where they can thrive and thus make nutrients available to our crops. Tillage kills many soil micro-organisms, especially the larger ones, leaving the soil dominated by bacteria rather than fungi. No-till methods favor the symbiotic relationships in the soil, some of which were only discovered in the past 20 years.

Tillage burns up the organic matter. We then have to add more back to grow crops. Tillage dries out the soil, and we then have to irrigate. No-till is less wasteful, more regenerative and more profitable. This book explores the advantages of no-till in a reader-friendly informative way.

No-till farming is particularly valuable to new farmers as it does not require large pieces of land or large equipment (aka lots of money). One person with access (not even ownership) to one acre (0.4 hectare) of land, and hand tools and tarps can start a small farm with very little else, and make a living. No-till enables farming on land otherwise unsuitable: too steep, too small, an awkward shape. Also on land with contaminated soil – grow flowers, or grow food crops in containers on a tarp over the soil.

No-till gives you more flexibility about when fields are prepped and planted. Tarping allows beds to be “saved” for later. In an urgent situation, use tarps slow down the descent into chaos that can overcome a beginner farmer or one whose life has taken an unexpected turn.

Andrew is upfront about the disadvantages of no-till: soils are slower to warm up in spring, and slower to provide nutrients to very early crops; the first year or two may be difficult, as the weed pressure takes time to reduce. Some methods are hard to scale up (think about acres of tarps). Some pests flourish in high-residue fields. Field-scale no-till methods tend to suppress weeds but not eliminate them.  Perennial weeds can become a bigger problem as years go by, and you’ll have no mechanical way to eliminate them.

Author Andrew Mefferd

HOW TO DO NO-TILL

Some no-till methods require patience. You could tarp a piece of land in grass in the fall, and leave the tarp in place until spring, to plant annual crops. Tarping works by smothering plants and depriving them of light. If the soil is damp when tarped, weed seeds can germinate, but will then die due to lack of light. Tarping or heavy mulching do take longer to kill weeds, but passively: during that time you can do other tasks.

To succeed in feeding the soil, make sure the soil contains something to digest the weeds or crop debris – the soil microbiome. Take care of the micro-livestock, and they will convert the nutrients into forms the future crops can use.

Sometimes preparation for no-till involves tilling (one last time). “You can’t grow a carrot in a lawn.”  Tillage is a reset button for turning pasture or a lawn into arable land. Likely you will need to make a trade-off between using your ideal no-till method, and earning some money from your farming sooner than the year it could take to tarp the sod to death.

Some no-till methods are more suited to large areas. One example is the roller-crimper method of terminating cover crops with a crimping roller to form a mulch in place, into which the new crop is transplanted. There are special no-till drills that can plant seed into a fairly thick killed cover crop residue. These are large machines. Not all no-till growers can (or want to) plant large areas with large machines.

On a small scale, transplanting into mow-killed or roll-killed cover crops works much better than direct seeding. Likewise, transplants are easier in the looser soil of a no-till system with raised beds, where you remove the old crop, add needed compost and amendments on top, and plant the new crop. Transplants can root in rougher soil than a seed can germinate in. If seeding, the bigger the seed, the easier the task. You might be surprised to learn that most crops can be transplanted, including sweet corn, watermelon, winter squash, peas and beans. Another advantage of using transplants is that you have living roots in the soil for a higher proportion of the time, compared with direct seeding. Another is the gain of effective growing season: you may be able to grow two or three crops in sequence, because each is in the ground for several weeks less than when you direct-sow.  Sometimes transplanting the crop will be easier than making a fluffy seedbed to drill into. Transplanting one-cut lettuce rather than sowing baby salad mix, is an example of changing techniques to fit the no-till paradigm.

Compacted soil can present a challenge in no-till systems. Test by pushing a wire flag into the oil. Use a broadfork to loosen the compacted soil without turning it. Instructions and photos are in the Getting Started chapter.

Broadfork from Way Cool Tools.
Photo Way Cool Tools

To use the tarping method, first do soil tests and a test of your compost. Amend your soil as needed, let your compost mature longer if that’s what the tests indicate. Then reduce the height of whatever is growing on the land, as much as possible, by mowing or grazing. If you want the plants to rot away, be sure to run irrigation under the tarp. Dry soil will not rot plants. Cutting the plant matter into small pieces before tarping (with a weed whip or flail mower) will speed up decomposition.

Next, reduce the weed seed bank, by a process called “stale seed-bedding” where you prepare the bed ahead of time, deliberately germinate the weed seeds, then kill the weeds before the crop is planted. Tarping, (provided you leave the tarp down long enough, at least 4 weeks) can germinate and kill the newly emerging weeds.

If that doesn’t happen, you will need to manage the weeds another way. Flame-weeding of tiny weeds provides a clean seedbed. If you miss the white-thread stage of weeds, use a wire weeder, stirrup hoe (scuffle hoe), or a fine-tined weeder to kill small weeds in an existing crop, without inverting any soil. “Blind cultivation” is a method of cultivation after sowing the crop, pulling flexible fine tines shallowly (and fairly quickly) over the surface, killing white-thread-stage weeds. Blind cultivation tools were previously only available as tractor implements, but they are now also made in a manual version. You could instead, lay thick organic mulch, or a sheeting mulch over the soil. There are photos of these tools in action in the book.

Solarizing (in this case to to combat nematodes): Step on a spade to push the plastic down into a slot in the soil.
Photo Pam Dawling

Solarization in sunny weather with temperatures above 65°F (18°C), will kill existing weeds in just a couple of days. Solarization involves installing clear hoophouse plastic (UV-inhibited) in close contact with the soil, with the edges firmly held down to trap heat. There is a whole chapter on tarping (aka occultation) and solarization, with everything you need to know to start using these techniques. For small weeds, solarizing is quicker than tarping. Weed seeds and roots of perennial weeds will not die as fast as small weeds.

Mulches are inert materials put on top of the soil to keep weeds and moisture in, to keep light and weed seeds out, or both. The term includes tarps, clear plastic, landscape fabric, plastic mulch, cardboard, paper, straw, tree leaves, woodchips, thick layers of compost, and more. Organic mulches cool the soil (for better or worse), and can attract and harbor some pests (voles, slugs).

Roma paste tomatoes planted into mowed rye and hairy vetch mulch, later topped with spoiled hay. Photo Bridget Aleshire

Mulch can be grown in place, then mowed or rolled at the right stage, to kill the cover crop. Cover crops start to decompose as soon as terminated, so don’t do it ahead of time. When cover crops start to decompose, weeds start to germinate. You need to plan the timing for this system to work well: when to sow the cover crop, when to terminate, when to transplant the food crop. You need a dense cover crop planting. This system doesn’t fit with frequent plantings of small amounts of crop, but can work well for larger areas of warm-weather transplanted crops. You may have to hand-pull weeds that do come up. If your scale is too small for a tractor-mounted crimping roller, you can try the small-scale method involving two people stepping on a T-post laid across the bed. You can tarp after crimping or mowing. Keeping the cover crop dry delays decomposition.

Winter-killed cover crops provide another opportunity to transplant into mulch grown in place. This only works in early spring, and will keep the soil cooler, and the soil nutrients less available than in bare soil. Be warned – this can delay and reduce harvests of early spring crops.

There is a useful chart summarizing the turning points in a season where a decision needs to be made between one management decision or another. The beginning of season: are there few or many weeds? Time to prep beds: will you be sowing or transplanting? Time to deal with weeds: do you have mulch or not? At the end of the crop: do you have low or high crop residue? At the end of the season: will you use tarps or cover crops?

The best crops to focus on are ones that are in demand, and ones that bring a high price. If space is short, don’t grow sweet corn! One-cut lettuce, with all-small leaves can be a good no-till alternative to baby lettuce mix. Harvest and replant from plugs. You can earn more money, because of the higher yield. Harvest each new planting 30 days later (longer in midwinter). This method keeps living roots in the soil all the time. (unlike baby salad mix). One-cut lettuce has a longer shelf life and fewer brown edges than cut leaves. The seed does cost more, and you need a propagation greenhouse to grow the transplants. For many growers the disadvantages are much fewer than the advantages.

Quick crops lead to multiple crop transitions, and no-till methods make transitions quicker. Cut the old crop (and weeds) off at the soil line, add compost and amendments, and replant. Or tarp the bed, weeds and all, and replant when the residues have died. Flail mowing the residues will speed up the decomposition, whether you are tarping or not.

Andrew includes a case study growing hemp in a quarter-acre (0.1 hectare) field that had not been used for two years, and had partly returned itself to grass. He limed first, then tarped for the month of May, using a cobbled-together mix of some clear greenhouse plastic and some opaque tarps. The weather was cool and rainy (not ideal).  The tarps were removed in mid-June. Not much vegetation had survived. Andrew did a soil test, added fertilizer and 4” (10 cm) of compost, then unrolled hay on 5’ (1.5 m) centers, leaving 1’ (30 cm) unmulched in center of each bed, where the plants would go. He transplanted 4” (10 cm) seedlings, and one month later, the weeds were as tall as the crop. He spent eight hours hand-weeding, and two hours with a weed whip. The plants grew to 6-7’ (2 m) by the end of the season, and had closed the canopy, preventing any more weeds from growing. No time was saved compared to tillage method! But the weed seed bank was reduced, and the soil life was conserved, and carbon was sequestered in the soil Definitely successful!

The book finishes up with an appendix, glossary, notes, citations, bibliography, and index. A valuable resource for all of us aspiring to do less tillage, and especially for those hoping to eliminate tillage altogether.

Book Review Farming on the Wild Side, The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery, Nancy and John Hayden

Farming On The Wild Side book cover. Chelsea Green.
Book Review Farming on the Wild Side, The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery, Nancy and John Hayden, Chelsea Green, 2019. 258 pages, $29.95.

This is a lovely, thoughtful, well-illustrated book, telling how Nancy and John Hayden changed their farm (formerly a conventional dairy farm) over three decades into a regenerative farm, now specializing in perennial fruit trees. Their focus has been on stewarding the land mindfully, restoring and increasing biodiversity. In these uncertain times, there is much we can’t do alone, and we worry if enough people will make enough of the necessary changes. We can, instead, focus on positive changes we can make to improve our world. Growing and nurturing plants will benefit you, the plants and the planet.

The Haydens have an 18-acre farm in northern Vermont with undulating land, and a wide range of soil types. Very different from central Virginia, where I live! Both moved to Syracuse, NY to study biology and ecology, and after meeting at university, they worked in the Peace Corps on opposite sides of the African continent. Nancy worked in Kenya, supporting small farmers installing fishponds. John was in Mali, helping market gardeners and farmers, especially in dealing with millet pests. They both grew intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, with broader worldviews, awareness of white privilege, and deeper understanding of solitude and loneliness.

After Peace Corps, they reunited, married and began graduate school at Michigan State U, studying entomology (John) and environmental engineering (Nancy). John hankered to start a farm, so when Nancy was offered a post at the University of Vermont, they packed up the family and moved. A few months later, they bought their farm. It was a well-manicured conventional dairy farm with a cathedral-like barn built in 1900. The lawns are now orchards, and the stream banks host fruit bushes and small trees. The focus these days is on biodiversity and a regenerative food system, not on “pretty”. You can see before and after photos, and sketch maps of their farm (The Farm Between).

The book includes a valuable chart summarizing their practices and events during each of the three decades of their farm life so far. This shows how changes can be made as interests and focus shift. Long-term sustainability for aging farmers!

In the initial years their goals were to feed their family high quality food (hard to find to buy in the 1990’s), treat livestock humanely, regenerate the land for long-term health, and generate income from farming. They grew organic annual vegetables and raised grass-fed poultry, rabbits, sheep and pigs for a meat CSA. They also raised young children, and a family cow. The farm hosted field trips from local elementary schools, and Nancy became an associate professor.

John and Nancy got inspiration from Holistic Resource Management, as well as many small-farming pioneers. HRM led them to learn and practice management intensive grazing. This involves carefully matching stocking density with the health of the pastures, leading to continuous improvement. Paddocks just large enough, and no bigger, encourage livestock to graze all the plants down, leading to lush and nutritious regrowth. Initially their pastures were overrun with reed canary grass, and just one year of intensive grazing management with sheep started to bring improvements.

They also raised chickens and rabbits in moveable pens (chicken tractors), and quickly devised improvements to the pen design and the choice of breed. They trained all their livestock to come running when they heard grain shaken in a bucket. This good habit saved them from problems when livestock got loose onto the busy state road.

In the middle decade (roughly the 2000’s), the children grew up and left home, John became a lecturer on Plant and Soil Science, the field trips included special needs children and summer camps for middle-schoolers. They became more focused on resilience, biodiversity and pollinators. Keeping livestock makes it hard for a farming couple or family to vacation at the same time, and well-trained farm sitters are worth a lot!

Raising animals in confined spaces, feeding mostly corn and soy and antibiotics, while exploiting workers and degrading the environment is a disgrace to our society. Slaughtering animals is tough, and where possible, the Haydens opted for on-farm slaughter, as less stressful and more humane. The Haydens cut back on meat production and expanded perennial and annual food crops.

After 20 years of learning and practicing with draft horses during visits to working horse farms, and after 10 years at The Farm Between, John bought his own team of two Clydesdales. This helped them successfully expand their vegetable and small fruit production. From 2004-2011, they put up five hoophouses, initially for tomatoes and other valuable vegetables. They could pay for the structures and the wages in one year by growing cherry tomatoes in each new hoophouse. This increased their resilience in the face of extreme weather of various kinds, and in 2009, they planted a few rows of fall raspberries in one of the hoophouses. These did so well that the next year they planted one whole hoophouse full.

The third decade (after serious flooding from Hurricane Irene in 2011) brought a forceful introduction to the reality of climate change. Their focus on improving the soil has included a major composting operation. The Haydens have succeeded in doubling the organic matter in their soils from 2.5 to 6% over the years. Initially John collected food scraps to feed their chickens and then compost. But the heavy lifting and the rats got to him.

It takes 500 years or more to grow an inch of soil, which is all too easily lost to wind and water erosion. Growing cover crops holds the soil in place while adding organic matter. While they grew mostly annual vegetables, the Haydens used at least one-third of their land for growing cover crops, usually including legumes, to add nitrogen to the soil. Growing annual vegetables is stressful. Everything is urgent and important, all season! Perennials allow more flexibility, for example in the timing of weeding and pruning.

They committed more to perennial polyculture, retired the horses and bought a tractor. Fruit planting had expanded every year, with perennial vegetables and annual hemp in the alleys between the rows. Other alleys are left unmowed to encourage milkweed (selling seeds and floss). All the while, the edges and hedges have provided biological diversity for insects, birds and other creatures.

Nancy Hayden, author of Farming on the Wild Side

They repurposed all their hoophouses to grow fruit, protected from the elements as well as pests and diseases. They have dwarf apple trees (blemish-free no-spray organic apples!), cherries, peaches, plums, apricots and raspberries. Outdoors they grow hazelberts, elderberries, aronia, honeyberry, gooseberries, blackcurrants, red and white currents, and many blueberries. The increased fruit production led them to work with cider producers and market other fruit products including selling at the Burlington Farmers’ Market. They started a retail nursey of fruit trees on the farm, alongside fruit sales. Operating a fruit tree nursey at the farm enables the farmers to attract customers who are very interested in what they are doing, and will encourage and support them in growing their own fruit. Nancy retired from UVM. They expanded on-farm workshops, field trips and classes for all ages.

They were able to provide free housing for their employees and pay them above minimum wage. Despite the obvious success of their farm stand, farmers’ market, meat and produce CSAs, restaurant and grocery accounts, they were not quite satisfied. The family were eating well, and Nancy’s off-farm income kept them afloat and allowed them to build up the farm infrastructure. John was working 60-80 hours a week on the farm, but not producing much net income for the four-child family they were now raising. John calculated he was earning half minimum wage, and the only way that was being “successful” was that the 80 hour weeks made two half-minimum wages! Their aging bodies had also become a factor to consider. Also, Nancy and John developed interests that vied for their attention, much as they were still committed to the farm.

They had noticed their soil structure was deteriorating, even though the organic matter content was increasing. They studied approaches to deal with soil loss and degradation, climate disruption, water and air pollution, declining food quality and loss of biodiversity. The book includes a valuable chart listing stressors in the categories of environmental, social, economic and personal stresses, and resilience strategies to tackle each.

The Haydens committed to be more proactive in benefiting the land, and becoming more economically resilient. Their approach was a synthesis of:

  • resilience (ability to bounce back from stresses and shocks),
  • organic farming (nurture healthy soil to grow healthy crops and healthy people: it’s about the soil, not about the certificate),
  • regenerative organic (rebuild soil organic matter, increase biodiversity, improve water quality and slow the pace of climate change),
  • agroecology (approaching agriculture by combining ecology, biology, agronomy, plant physiology and more, improving soils and water, biodiversity, species conservation, carbon sequestration),
  • permaculture (“permanent agriculture”, integrative perennial-based systems, working with the natural environment, providing for the needs of people locally),
  • agroforestry (intentionally incorporating trees and shrubs into farming systems for the benefit of the environment, the community and the farm,)
  • biodynamics (considering each farm as a unique integrated organism, raising crops and livestock synergistically)
  • wabi sabi (finding beauty and value in the impermanent, the natural cycles of growth, death and decay.)
  • rewilding (letting banks, ditches, shrubs and trees grow back, providing shelter and food for many more insects and birds; planting orchards in place of lawns,
  • personal spiritual traditions (focusing on nature and natural cycles)

As a result of considering all these approaches, Nancy and John found themselves drawn to wholesaling fruit, particularly to local wineries. They wanted no-spray organic fruit, pointing out that organic fungicides and broad-spectrum insecticides are toxic to pollinators and other beneficial insects, as well as the pest species.

In August 1995, a few years after John and Nancy moved to the farm, the summer drought was broken by three days of rain upstream of the farm. The river overflowed, flooding the low fields and the barn three feet deep. The water level receded the next day, leaving a big mess, including dead chicks and destroyed equipment. The house was on higher ground, and was not affected.

In 2011, they got a 500-year flood in April and a repeat with Hurricane Irene in August.  They lost their potato and corn crops, and noticed that the perennial fruit bushes and conservation shrubs recovered just fine when the water receded. They decided not to grow annual crops in the low-lying Field Six any more, but instead plant elderberries and aronia, which tolerate some flooding.

As they transitioned to growing mostly perennials, they also stopped tilling. They sheet mulch around newly planted fruit trees and berry bushes, with either cardboard and woodchips, or with landscape fabric rolls with “seam-lines” along the planting rows. This means they can open the overlapping pieces in spring or fall to add soil amendments. They’ve also used this technique to grow pumpkins, sunflowers and CBD hemp in the alleys between young fruit trees. They also employ a “grow, mow and blow” in the alleys to deposit home-grown mulch around the trees.

Transitioning to more perennials in polyculture orchards led them to incorporate agroforestry practices such as hedges, biomass trees, and riparian forest zones (next to streams). Hedgerows act as windbreaks, as well as enhancing biodiversity, and reducing soil erosion and offering sanctuary to many kinds of wildlife.

The apple orchards provide scion wood for selling and for grafting to make new trees. Between new fruit trees, in the rows, they plant blackcurrants and other fruit bushes, nitrogen-fixing small trees and perennial wildflowers. These infill plants will be chopped or lopped for mulch when the apple trees need the space.

Perennial vegetables also have a place on the farm. Asparagus and rhubarb have been there for over 20 years. Sea kale and Jerusalem artichokes are more recent additions, in the alleys between apple trees. Remember this book is written in Vermont, where rhubarb ripens in June, blueberries in July and elderberries in late summer. Follow the concepts, not the details, if you are in a very different climate zone.

Climate change in Vermont has, so far, meant warmer, earlier springs, which can cause trees to break bud, risking crop death by frosts in May. Using hoophouses for fruit can reduce risk. Leave the hoophouse open all winter, but if a spring frost threatens during or after bloom, close the house up for the night. “Fruit trees can break your heart,” the authors warn.

John Hayden, Author of Farming on the Wild Side

The section on rootstocks, scion wood and grafting explains how to propagate trees. Growing polycultural orchards reduces dependency on any particular variety or type, and makes organic production much more viable, as pest or disease outbreaks are rarer and other crops compensate for whichever is taken down. There’s a nice list of the ten best apple varieties at the farm, and one of stone fruit cultivars. Again, remember this is Vermont, zone 4a.

The farm also grows many less common cold-hardy berries. Blackcurrants do well in Vermont, but I know from experience that they do poorly in the South. The yield is plentiful, but the harvest slow. Their target rate is ten pounds an hour. The variety Tatania is their highest-yielding, at 4.7 pounds per bush. A useful tip is to stand still and move the branches towards you, rather than moving yourself a lot. There are tips on good varieties of berries too.

Elderberries and Aronia have already been mentioned as flood-tolerant. Both also require full sun. they are high in anti-oxidants, and attract wildlife, unfortunately including Spotted Wing Drosophila, which cause the berries to drop before the whole panicle is ripe. The solution is to pick every few days, removing the ripe parts of the clusters. Note that American elderberries need to be cooked or fermented before eating, as they contain cyanide-inducing compounds.

The farm has an area of boxed propagation beds where they raise hardwood cuttings to grow bushes for sale. They have a space where customers can see full-size plants in a natural setting. This area supports many pollinators, as does their willow labyrinth. There is a mowed walking path around the pollinator sanctuary, where visitors love to observe plants, insects, birds, and other wildlife. The riparian zone is part of a contiguous wildlife corridor connecting the woods and the farm, and providing edges with meadows and cropland. Common milkweed in the orchard alleys is promoted by mowing the grass early, before the milkweed emerges.

The chapter on pests and diseases invites us to rethink these life-forms. Weed management is necessary. Birds can be “pests” on fruit crops during the harvest period. Netting the berries at this time and then removing the nets to let the birds in to clean up the dropped berries helps reduce other pest problems, such as SWD. At the time the book was written, their way of dealing with the SWD was to net individual panicles of elderberries using nylon “footies.” Crop diversity reduces potential crop losses and pest outbreaks.

The Haydens dispute the myth that pests on a plant show the plant is unhealthy or that the soil conditions are wrong. Having a diversity of insects shows a natural balance. If the number of pests increases to the point of causing economic damage, that’s a pest outbreak, and needs action. Having a low level of pest insects keeps predators and parasites provided for! Always look for parasites, such as the white fly eggs on the thorax of the Japanese beetles. Everything may be being taken care of! Wiping everyone out with pesticides causes imbalance, and the pest populations can come back faster than their predators. The true parasites are the pesticide companies, say the authors!

Attention is also paid to pollinators, providing nesting habitat as well as pollen and nectar sources. Native bees are perhaps in greater peril than (imported) honeybees. They just don’t have as good PR, despite flying earlier in the year and in colder, rainier, windier weather! There are 275 native bee species in Vermont (4,000 in the US). Most of us didn’t know that! There is a table of when various pollinator flowers start blooming in Vermont, to help anyone seeking to provide bee forage more of the season.

As Nancy and John produced more value-added fruit products for sale, they noticed an interesting thing: people would pay for the jam or syrup-topped snow cones, but balk at the price of the actual fruit! It’s time to move away from our expectation of cheap food (which likely derives from the history of enslaved people doing most of the farm-work in the US in the past).

Another change for the farm is to selling fruit wholesale, to wineries, breweries, cideries and soda makers. They like the big “over-and-done” sales, although selling retail direct from the farm is important for staying in touch with the public and diversifying income streams. Nancy and John point out that they could not have done all they’ve done without off-the-farm income. This is the reality for most farmers, particularly small-scale farmers. Nancy and John were fortunate in finding off the farm work that they enjoyed.

The book wraps up with an appendix of common and scientific names of plants and arthropods mentioned in the book, and an impressive twelve-page, triple-columned index. This is a book by people who really want to help us navigate our path through farming for the long haul.