Soil tests and high phosphorus levels

I just got back from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference, where I had a great time. I will be posting my slideshow Sequential Planting of Cool Season Crops in a High Tunnel here next week, after I’ve added back in some of the material I had to cut to fit the time slot. Meanwhile here’s some in depth thoughts about phosphorus levels, an issue for those of us who pile lots of animal manure or compost on our gardens.

Soil pH analysis machine at Virginia Tech.
Photo from Virginia Tech

This is the best time to get a Soil Test

            Get an annual soil test in the fall, from the same agency each time—different labs sometimes use varying test methods. Also, soil collected in spring is usually higher in P than soil collected in the fall. Consult an agronomy book, your extension service, or a live agronomist for help in interpreting your test results. Most soil tests don’t include a measure of organic matter as this can vary a lot from week to week. My state extension service provides standard tests for soil pH, P, K, Ca, Mg, Zn, Mn, Cu, Fe, B, and estimated CEC, plus a fertilizer and lime recommendation. For a small fee there are special tests for soluble salts and organic matter.

Amendments and the Issue of High Phosphorus

High levels of soluble salts, including nitrate, potassium, and sulfate from fertilizers or organic materials like compost can build up and stunt plant growth.  Some of the salt problems are caused by having very high organic matter levels, due to heavy amendment with composts or manures. In high OM soils, when warm or when irrigated after a dry spell, large flushes of nitrate can occur. This makes it difficult to manage nitrogen levels.

Organic soil amendments include soil inoculants, organic mulches, biochar and other soil conditioners, lime and other natural minerals, manure and other organic fertilizers, such as alfalfa meal, soybean meal, fish meal, kelp, composted chicken litter and compost.

Screening compost from a huge pile, for spring seedling compost.
Photo Wren Vile

Most growers are lavish with compost when they can be. Good quality finished compost is a way to add organic matter and nutrients. Compost can add a range of beneficial bacteria and fungi, which can inoculate plants against diseases by inducing systemic acquired resistance. The plants produce antibodies and other protective compounds before any infection can occur. Compost improves the soil structure, organic matter and humus. The effects last longer than cover crops and crop residues, especially in humid conditions where the breakdown of plant material is very rapid.

How much compost is too much? Some of us were raised to think of compost as the gold standard soil improver, and find it hard to believe there can be too much of a good thing. Others may consider compost like salad dressing—something to add that je-ne-sais-quoi to a good meal.

Compared with poultry litter compost (lower C:N  ratio), on-farm mixed compost (high C:N) leads to higher total soil organic C and N, higher N mineralization potential and better water infiltration. Poultry litter compost can enhance organic matter and N mineralization potential over conventional systems, but can lead to excess P. In terms of organic matter, composted manure is better than uncomposted solid manure, and both add more than slurry manure (which provides very low C:N; and half of the N is ammonium).

Manure and compost can add too much P relative to N and K. It is worthwhile to understand the effect of phosphorus.

Phosphorus in the Soil and in Plants

Phosphorus is needed for cell division, hence to promote root formation and growth, vigorous seedlings, flowering, crop maturity and seed production, and to improve winter hardiness in fall plantings. Phosphorus is important in fat, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen metabolism, in respiration, and in photosynthesis. It is stored in seeds and fruit.

Phosphorus binds easily with many other minerals in the soil, forming compounds that are not very soluble in water, therefore most of the phosphate in soils exists in solid form and phosphorus does not move freely with soil water. Although P is very mobile within plants, it is relatively immobile in soil and does not leach readily in normal rainfall or irrigation.

P is most available to plants between soil pH of 6 and 7.5, especially pH 6.5-6.8.

In neutral and alkaline soils P is mostly present as insoluble calcium phosphates. In acid soils below pH 5.5, most of the P is bound as iron phosphate or aluminum phosphate, compounds that further change gradually into very insoluble compounds not available to plants. If a soil test shows a pH that is far from neutral, with a slightly low P level, correct the pH and repeat the soil test before amending the P level.

In the soil water, P is only present in very small amounts, but when removed by plants, supplies are quickly replenished from the “active P pool” (P in solid compounds which is relatively easily released to the soil solution). The “fixed P pool” contains inorganic phosphate compounds that are very insoluble, and organic compounds that are resistant to mineralization by microorganisms in the soil. Although some slow conversion between the fixed P pool and the active P pool does occur in the soil, phosphate may remain for years without being available to plants and may have very little impact on soil fertility.

Since the movement of phosphates in soils is very limited, roots have to grow to the phosphorus—it will not move towards the plants. Manure contains soluble phosphate, organic phosphate, and inorganic phosphate compounds that are quite available. Water-soluble forms generally become insoluble very soon after application to the soil.

Phosphorus Deficiency

In cold soils less P is available from organic materials, because biological activity is required to release it and it runs slow when it’s cold. Also, roots cannot absorb P well from cool soils.  Early spring brassicas can show red or purplish colors (anthocyanin pigment) in the leaves, especially undersides, and the lower stems. Cell necrosis may follow. Root growth will be poor, plants may exhibit stunting and delayed maturity. Tomato plants may have yellow leaves, with purpling on the underside of leaves. They may exhibit reduced flowering and delayed maturity. To avoid P deficiency problems, wait until the soil is 60°F (15.5°C) before planting.

Effects of excess soil salt levels on crop foliage.
Photo Rose Ogutu, Horticulture Specialist, Delaware State University

Excess Phosphorus

The main symptom of excessive phosphorus in soil is stunted plant growth. High P interferes with N absorption. Also there may be symptoms of deficiencies of zinc, iron, cobalt or calcium, because the P has locked up these nutrients.  Zn deficiency shows as bleaching of plant tissue, Fe deficiency as yellowing between leaf veins. Co is involved in the process by which the plant stem grows, shoot tips elongate, and leaves expand. Ca deficiency produces blossom end rot of tomatoes.

Phosphorus inhibits the growth of mycorrhizae which help the plant absorb water and nutrients. Increased growth of non-mycorrhizal weeds such as velvetleaf, lambsquarters, pigweed and galinsoga can be sign of excess P, explained Klaas Martens at MOFGA’s 2009 Spring Growth Conference.

Aside from plant growth problems, the issues with having very high P levels in your soil include that if it reaches waterways it can accelerate eutrophication—the nutrient enrichment of surface water leading to problem algal growth. When an algal bloom dies, it decomposes, using up the oxygen in the water, so fish and other organisms die too. Phosphorus is a paradoxical element in that it is an essential nutrient, is not toxic itself and has low solubility, but can have damaging effects on water quality at quite low concentrations.  Because P is usually locked up, leaching of soluble P from soils is not normally a problem, but if soil particles are carried to a river or lake, P is contained in this sediment.

Mitigating High Phosphorus Levels

Ear of triticale.
Photo triticale-infos.eu

The quickest way to reduce excess soil P (which can take years!) is to stop any manure or compost application while continuing to grow crops that can be eaten or sold. One solution for vegetable growers may be to grow cover crops as forage crops, and graze or bale grass crops to sell off the farm as livestock feed. For example, triticale is very good at removing P from the soil and producing winter forage. The P removed ranges from 7–36 pounds/acre (7.8–40 kg/ha). The more P your soil has, then the higher the P level in triticale grown in that soil. Double cropping can remove P at twice the rate.

Vegetable growers do not have the problem of P accumulation to such a big degree as livestock farmers, nor do vegetable crops remove P at the rate forages do. See the New England Vegetable Management Guide Removal of Nutrients from the Soil for a table of Approximate Nutrient Removal by Selected Vegetable Crops. The best vegetable removers of P are celery (80 lbs P2O5/acre, 90 kg/ha), tomatoes (72 lbs, 81 kg), potatoes (65 lbs, 73 kg), sweet potatoes (60 lbs, 67 kg), peppers (52 lbs, 58 kg, fruits only), cucumbers (33–72 lbs, 37–81 kg), eggplant (56 lbs, 63 kg). Onions remove about 25 lbs (28 kg/ha) one-quarter of the P removed by alfalfa hay (104 lbs, 117 kg) In all cases, to achieve results this high, grow high yields and remove the vines too, although you can’t sell those! Beans and peas are in the 7–10 lbs (8–11 kg) range if just pods, 20 lbs (22 kg) with vines. P2O5 is 43.7% P.

Celery, the star of phosphorus-removing vegetable crops.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Strategies to reduce the amount of P added each year include adjusting your compost use rates according to soil test P results. On low-P soil, use at rates to meet the soil needs for N or K, which will  increase P levels. If the soil P is high or optimum, use compost sufficient to just replenish P, and legume cover crops (or legume food crops) to supplement N. For very high or excess soil P, only use compost sparingly as a micro-organism inoculant, rather than a fertilizer, and  if  test reports show more than 40 lbs P per acre (45 kg/ha), consider using only soil amendments containing little or no P. If phosphorus levels are excessive, avoid using manure composts (high in phosphorus), and other fertilizers and amendments containing phosphorus. Add more carbon (“brown”) ingredients to compost you make on-farm.

 

CFSA report, SSAWG plans, a quiet time in between?

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference
Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference

I’m home from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference, and I had a great time. There were 1200 attendees and this was their 30th anniversary! I gave two workshops: Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables and Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests, which I updated and you can view here:

I attended three good workshops by Steve Moore (High Tunnels/hoophouses), Ellen Polishuk (Coaxing more profit from your farm) and Laura Lengnick (Resilient Agriculture). It’s nice to have enough time at an event to attend other farmers’ workshops.


 

GFM-NovemberDecember2015-cover_300pxThe November/December Growing for Market magazine is out. This double issue has 28 pages, with my article on succession planting in the winter hoophouse, and other articles on ginger, farm finances, and diseases in the winter flower greenhouse.


 

Right click on image above to download and use on your website or blog.

Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference
Lexington Convention Center ~ Lexington, Kentucky

You can see the full conference program with session descriptions at: http://www.ssawg.org/2016-conference-program

Pre-Conference Courses and Field Trips: January 27-28, 2016

General Conference: January 29-30, 2016
Visit www.ssawg.org for complete details

My workshop:

Intensive Vegetable Production on a Small Scale

Friday, January 29, 9:45 – 11:00

I’ll also be signing books on Thursday evening January 28, 7-8.30pm

Virginian Eat-All Greens on November 8 Photo by Lori Katz
Virginian Eat-All Greens on November 8
Photo by Lori Katz

 

 

Book Review, Resilient Agriculture by Laura Lengnick

Image-front-cover_coverbookpage_embedResilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate.

Laura Lengnick. New Society Publishers

ISBN 978-0-86571-774-9

I first heard Laura Lengnick speak at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference in 2012. Her solution-focused presentation was “Is Your Farm Climate Ready?”

 I wrote in April about her new book, Resilient Agriculture, which was launched by New Society at the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, NC

EJ at New Society has reviewed this book on the New Society blog

Since April I have been reading the book and finding lots of practical tips as well as moral support and help with thinking clearly about what could otherwise be a paralyzing topic: producing food in the face of an increasingly erratic and unpredictable climate. This major transformation is so hard to consider that at times I’ve thought “thank goodness I’m already in my sixties – it’s the younger people who will have to bear the brunt of coping with this mess.” I know that is neither a constructive nor a realistic approach – we each need to make our best effort if our species is to survive the wild changes and unprecedented obstacles ahead.

Temperatures and rainfall outside of our experience are some of the challenges. There are also effects we have barely begun to think about: different bugs and plant diseases; weeds which can grow faster than before; times of desperate water shortage, times of flooding; hurricanes and other strong winds; colder winter and spring temperatures affecting bud burst of fruit and nut trees. But this is far from a doom-and-gloom book. Nor is it a “Blame Industry/Government” tome. It is a very practical and constructive aid to successful sustainable farming.

Fall broccoli last year. Credit Ezra Freeman
Fall broccoli.
Credit Ezra Freeman

In some cases we have already been practicing some of the skills we’ll need: growing a diversity of crops and livestock; learning from our experience (record-keeping!), paying attention to the weather and learning to forecast our local weather; making plans we are prepared to change as conditions change, and having enough workers, seeds and machines to take advantage of smaller windows.

Young blueberry bush in the snow. Credit Bridget Aleshire
Young blueberry bush in the snow.
Credit Bridget Aleshire

In the Southeast, farmers report more frequent summer droughts, more and hotter heat waves, increased intensity of hurricanes, and in general more frequent extreme weather events of all types, more often. This is what we need to be ready for, at the same time as we reduce our own carbon footprints and campaign for national changes. Starting around 1980, the length of the frost-free season increased across the US. In the SE, it became 6 days longer. Ours is the region with the smallest change. On the other hand, the Southeast has seen a 27% increase in the amount of rain and snow dropping down as very heavy precipitation. The East has become a bit warmer and has heavier rainfall/snowfall, while the West has become hotter and has a smaller percentage change in the amount of heavy precipitation.

In Resilient Agriculture, Laura Lengnick uses her own extensive knowledge of the science and politics of climate change and her personal experience of growing food, along with her interviews with award-winning sustainable farmers across the US to give us a both a basic framework for approaching the issue and many practical tips.

The framework

Climate change is yet another production risk to assess and prepare for – a big one. The vulnerability of a farm is the degree to which it is susceptible to adverse effects of climate change. It is a combination of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Thinking about climate change using this framework helps us focus on the components we have most control over: sensitivity and adaptive capacity.

Exposure and sensitivity acting together decide the potential impact of climate change. Water issues (too much and too little) are the most immediate key exposures (changes in conditions). Rising air temperatures, including night temperatures, more extreme temperatures provide threats and some opportunities. Increasing CO2 levels will provide some positive effects such as faster crop growth. We can reduce exposure overall by reducing emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. These broad efforts are vital, but will have less immediate effects at a farm level.

Sensitivity is a measure of how much a given farm is affected by the conditions (exposures). For example, is the farm in a flood plain in a region that can expect more floods in future? What are the factors limiting the ability of the farm to adapt to climate change? Assessing the farm’s sensitivities provides a good starting point for planning adaptive strategies.

Adaptation is the method most successful in addressing the challenges of climate change at a local level. Adaptive capacity includes our individual capability, knowledge and options, and the operating context (your farm’s unique combination of economic, social and ecological conditions). As far as adaptive capacity, the main feature of that aspect is our personal capacity to respond and plan. Laura Lengnick says “Greater attention to climate as critical for decision-making is expected by future generations of producers.” We need to start with ourselves.

Keep clear plans and records
Keep clear plans and records

The interviews encompass farmers of vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and livestock. Each production section includes five to ten farms in various parts of the country and ends with a summary of challenges to the adaptive capacity of farmers in that production area. Farmers report on changes they have observed in the past twenty years, whether those changes seem to be long term, and changes they have made to their farming practices as a way to improve their chance of harvesting good yields. Naturally I paid most attention to vegetable growing, and to farmers in the Southeast, to get some ideas on what changes I might wisely introduce.

Some vegetable growers noted the arrival of longer growing seasons, in particular, a longer fall season. Many refer to the need to improve irrigation systems and access to water supplies. Many also see a need to improve soil drainage and soil water-holding capacity. The diversity of vegetable crops many growers produce is a strength in that it spreads the risk. Whatever the weather, something will grow (surely?)

 

Wintry garden beds. Credit Ezra Freeman
Wintry garden beds.
Credit Ezra Freeman

I also found the sections on other types of farming useful, noting that fruit and nut tree growers were looking at diversifying into annual vegetables because of problems with late frosts or insufficient chilling hours that can lead to a complete crop failure in a perennial. Grain farmers had very interesting advice about mixtures of cover crop seed, cocktails of 10 – 20 different cover crops, to increase the chance of improving the soil and gaining longer-term benefits of resilience.

Laura Lengnick is one of the main authors of a USDA ARS report Climate Change and Agriculture: Effects and Adaptation. (USDA Technical Bulletin 1935) Feb 2013. She also participates in the Climate Listening Project, a “storytelling platform for conversations on climate change resilience”.  You can learn more about the Climate Listening Project in their introductory video.

Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy writes in his endorsement of the book, “we must keep climate from changing too much – because there’s nothing even the best farmer can do to cope with a truly overheated planet.”

Events I’ll be presenting at

Now I have the first three events of 2015 under my belt (Virginia Biofarming Conference, PASA Farming for the Future Conferece and the West Virginia Small Farms Conference, I am thinking about the next ones. Here’s the list for the rest of 2015:

MENFairLogoMother Earth News Fair, Asheville Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 15,000.

Dates: Saturday April 11 – Sunday April 12, 2015

Location: Western North Carolina Agricultural Center, 1301 Fanning Bridge Road,
Fletcher, NC 28732

Registration: $25 weekend pass.

motherearthnews.com/fair/north-carolina.aspx#axzz2k02EAfZq

motherearthnews.com/fair/exhibit.aspx#axzz3GJibTyC4

My Workshops: Hoophouse Spring and Summer Crops, Hoophouse Fall and Winter Crops

Booksigning


 

HHF Save the Date_2015Heritage Harvest Festival

Dates: Friday-Saturday September 11-12 2015

Location: Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia

Tickets: TBD. $10 in 2014, plus $10-15 per premium workshop

http://heritageharvestfestival.com.

My Workshops: Crop Rotations (Friday 1.30pm Premium Workshop in the Woodland Pavilion), Asian Greens (Saturday 4.30 pm in the Organic Gardening Tent at the Mountaintop – free workshop)

Book-signing


 

MENFairLogoMother Earth News Fair, Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. (to be confirmed) Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 18,000

Dates: Friday-Sunday September 18-20, 2015

Location: Seven Springs Mountain Resort, 777 Waterwheel Drive, Seven Springs, Pa. 15622

Registration: $20 weekend pass

motherearthnews.com/fair/pennsylvania.aspx#ixzz2k4f4jIuB

My Workshop topics to be decided

Booksigning


MENFairLogoMother Earth News Fair, Topeka, KS (to be confirmed) Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 12,000

Dates: October 24-25, 2015

Location: One Expocentre Dr., Topeka, KS 66612

Registration: $20 weekend pass

http://www.motherearthnews.com/fair/kansas.aspx

My Workshop topics to be decided


SAC-logocfsa-event-bug1-50x50Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference.

Dates: Friday – Sunday November 6-8, 2015

Location: Durham, NC

Registration: TBD http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/sac-register/

http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/

My Workshop topics to be decided


12/4/12 Progress update on my book

Image front cover

Since my last update on November 13, we’ve continued to make progress and yet the press date has had to be postponed until December 10. The publication date remains February 1st, even though the off-press date is now more like mid-late January. I still hope to have some books to sign and sell at the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference.

The photos for the color section, the extra photos for some of the chapter ends and the late additions to the drawings for heading the crop chapters are all being incorporated by the design and layout people at New Society Publishers.

Kathryn is busy on the index – I looked through that this morning and made some suggestions. She’s a very good indexer and a very good gardener. Sadly, we have to shrink down the index to make up for the extra-long text. The whole book has a maximum number of pages, so some things had to give way. I already wrote about pulling out a few chapters and editing down some of the others. This is a big book – 436 pages last time I looked.

The other task I had this morning was to reconfigure two charts and graphs that had got corrupted by the computer gremlins. It’s been a while since I worked with Excel charts, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find out how to fix it. But after a search and some experimenting, they came out OK, apart from an issue I had with the format of the dates. As an ex-pat Brit, I prefer the Day/Month approach, which is the opposite way round to the American Month/Day system. I also believe that written out month-names are easier to grasp than an endless stream of numerals. So my copy-editor and I agreed on a convention of “April 16”, which is in the normal US order of information, and still keeps the words in. But Excel hasn’t heard of that system. . .

This past week or so I also reviewed the text for the back cover, fixed a crop rotation diagram that had gone awry and read the foreword written by Lynn Byczynski, the editor of Growing for Market magazine.

Some of my endorsers, the people writing advance praise based on reading an electronic uncorrected proof, have sent me copies of what they’re sending in. That’s a nice gift to receive, enthusiastic approval. I’ve also had helpful suggestions: Mark Schonbeck, one of my beady-eyed endorsers, spotted some errors and confusions remaining. I checked what he wrote, and fixed the previously unspotted ones without messing up the page flow, as it’s too late for that, now the index is underway.

I’ve been thinking about how many bookmarks I want as give-aways, and exactly how many books I’ll buy on my initial order (probably 200-300, depending how many fit in a carton).

Once the index and all the fix-its are done, I’ll get the whole thing as a pdf for 24 hours, to look through, hoping not to find any big troubles.

Meanwhile I’m working on my next article for Growing for Market , and planning slideshows for my presentations in the New Year. I’ll be at Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in January presenting parts of three workshops. One on my own on Producing Asian Greens for Market (I’ve been gathering photos for that one);

An inviting patch of tatsoi. Photo credit Ethan Hirsh
An inviting patch of tatsoi. Photo credit Ethan Hirsh

one co-taught with Edwin Marty of the Hampstead Institute, Alabama on Intensive Production on a Small Scale; and as part of a panel on Integrating Organic Seed Production into Your Diversified Farm: Is it Right for You?

I’ve also agreed to do a workshop at a Virginia university in January on Planning for Successful Sustainable Farming. Then at the Virginia Biofarming Conference in Richmond, Virginia on February 8-9, I’m giving a workshop on Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops.

I’m negotiating a  possible March booking too.

The slide show from my workshop on growing garlic at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference is on www.slideshare.net. It is tagged by cfsa12, cfsa 12, growing garlic, for anyone who wants to look at that.

11/13/12 Progress update on my book


Since my last update in mid-late October, I’ve chosen the photos for the eight-page section of color photos, and also rounded up and sent in over 30 more photos to use in the spaces at the ends of chapters, where they finish high up the page. By this point I’ve pored through our photo collections so many times I no longer knew which ones were in the text, which were in the color section and which remained available, so I had to scroll through the proof to check each one. That took a while.

The book goes to press in just over two weeks, on November 28, and that will be a great day. – Not as great as publication day will be, but a very significant day in its own right!

Various kind and knowledgeable gardeners, researchers and teachers of organic gardening and farming have read the electronic proofs and written some encouraging praise about my book, for the cover, and Lynn Byczynski, the editor of Growing for Market, is writing the foreword.

My workshop on growing garlic at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference went well, and the slide show is on www.slideshare.net. It is tagged by cfsa12, cfsa 12, growing garlic, for people to search.

I’ve got several more powerpoint presentations to prepare for. I’ll be at Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in January presenting parts of three workshops. One on my own on Producing Asian Greens for Market; one co-taught with Edwin Marty of the Hampstead Institute, Alabama on Intensive Production on a Small Scale; and as part of a panel on Integrating Organic Seed Production into Your Diversified Farm: Is it Right for You?

I’ve just agreed to do a workshop at a Virginia university in January on Planning for Successful Sustainable Farming

Then at the Virginia Biofarming Conference in Richmond, Virginia on February 8-9, I’m giving a workshop on Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops.

I’m negotiating a  possible March booking too.

The book will get printed in during December and the publication date is February 1, 2013. I’m excited! And tired!

Hard at work on the book earlier this year

10/23/12 Progress update on my book


At last I’ve finished the proof-reading! It took me two whole weeks at about 3 hours a day. The design people at New Society Publishers sent me a layout of the pages with text, drawings and photos. Another step closer!

We’ve had to downsize to one eight-page section of color photos rather than two, because of the extra length of the text, which I talked about in my last update. This big book is going to be great value for money! As I said last time, people buying the electronic version will still get the “deleted scenes” and people buying the print version will get a link where they can read what we couldn’t print (so to speak!).

I also rounded up and sent in eleven more lovely drawings as chapter headers for the crop chapters which didn’t yet have one.

I’m working on collecting up more photos to use in some of the spaces at the ends of chapters, where they finish high up the page. When NSP sends me the pdf of the color photo section I’ll know which photos from my collection haven’t been used yet.

This weekend I’m off to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference, where I’m presenting a workshop on growing great garlic. I’ve been slaving away over my powerpoint presentation, and tomorrow I’ll make some handouts. I’ll be taking postcards and fliers to distribute too.

I’ve been working really hard lately, and I’m looking forward to going to some of the  workshops other people are presenting, and learning form them. Ag conferences are wonderful for re-vitalizing tired farmers like me!

Various kind and knowledgeable gardeners, researchers and teachers of organic gardening and farming are reading the electronic draft of my book in preparation for writing something honest and hopefully encouraging about my book, and Lynn Byczynski, the editor of Growing for Market, is writing the foreword.

I’m still working on making lists of magazines, websites and organizations that are a good match with my book, and good places to put reviews or advertisements.

I’ve got several more powerpoint presentations to prepare for. I’ll be at Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in January presenting parts of three workshops. One on my own on Producing Asian Greens for Market; one co-taught with Edwin Marty of the Hampstead Institute, Alabama on Intensive Production on a Small Scale; and as part of a panel on Integrating Organic Seed Production into Your Diversified Farm: Is it Right for You?

Then at the Virginia Biofarming Conference in Richmond, Virginia on February 8-9, I’m giving a workshop on Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops.

I’m negotiating a  possible March booking too.

Meanwhile, I’m writing another article for Growing for Market magazine, for the two-month issue coming out in December. And I’ve got my ideas for my January article already lined up.

The book will get printed in late November and December and the publication date is February 1, 2013. I’m excited!

9/18/12 Progress update on my book

The typesetters and design people at New Society Publishers are now laying out the pages and photos. We’re getting closer! This has not all been plain sailing. Today I’m working on replacing a dozen of the photos that didn’t have enough dots per inch or were too small to work well. We’re having two eight-page sections of color photos as well as the B&W photos as advertised!

I’ve also had to shorten the text a bit because what I sent in was too long. People buying the electronic version will still get the “deleted scenes” and people buying the print version will get a link where they can read what we couldn’t print (so to speak!).

I have postcards and fliers to distribute at events too, and bookmarks will be coming along later when the covers get printed (they’re printed at the side of the covers and trimmed off, as far as I understand it).

My next job directly for the book is to make a list of well-known people who might read the electronic proofs and write those “advance praise” comments that you see on back covers and in the front of books. That list is one of my jobs for today too.

Then, in a few days, I get to proofread the whole book, in the electronic proofs. And if there’s nothing major that would change the page flow, Kathryn Simmons at Twin Oaks will make the index. She’s not only one of the members of the Twin Oaks Indexing crew, but also a very experienced vegetable grower herself. (Maybe you’ve never thought about how a book comes to have an index. It doesn’t happen by magic! Click on the link to learn more.)

I’m also continuing to work on marketing ideas, compiling lists of magazines, websites and organizations that are a good match with my book, and good places to put reviews or advertisements. I’m also looking for events at which I’d like to make presentations in November and December. I’ll be at Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in January and the Virginia Biofarming Conference in February. I’m negotiating a  possible March booking too.

The book will get printed in late November and December and the publication date is February 1, 2013. I’m excited!

Meanwhile, I’m sending an article every month to Growing for Market magazine. See other blog posts for news about recent articles. People who don’t want to wait till the book comes out to start reading my work can get a sub to GfM. It’s a great magazine, full of the details small-scale growers need to be even more successful than they already are.

This weekend I gave my presentation on Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests at the Heritage Harvest Festival. It was sold out ahead of the event. (Well, the classrooms are a bit small, only 32 chairs.) My presentation went well, and I distributed postcards and fliers for my book.

My next presentation is Growing Great Garlic at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference in Greenville, SC October 26-27. Soon I’ll get busy on preparing my slideshow.