Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello – Sustainable Market Farming

Mother Earth News Fair PA, Heritage Harvest Festival, Ginger Field Day, Future Harvest CASA Beginning Farmer Training

I’ve updated my Events Page, so check there for events I hope to be speaking at between now and the end of March.

Coming right up:

September 14-16, 2018 Mother Earth News Fair, Seven Springs, PA

I’m presenting two workshops:

Fall and Winter Hoophouses Friday 5-6 pm at the Heirloom Gardener Stage

How to grow varied and plentiful winter greens for cooking and salads; turnips, radishes and scallions. How to get continuous harvests and maximize use of this valuable space, including transplanting indoors from outdoors in the fall. The workshop includes tips to help minimize unhealthy levels of nitrates in cold weather with short days. Late winter uses can include growing bare-root transplants for planting outdoors in spring.

Lettuce Year Round (NEW!) Sunday 2-3 pm at the Heirloom Gardener Stage

This presentation includes techniques to extend the lettuce season using rowcover, coldframes and hoophouses to provide lettuce harvests in every month of the year. The workshop will include a look at varieties for spring, summer, fall and winter. We will consider the pros and cons of head lettuce, leaf lettuce, baby lettuce mix and the newer multileaf types. Information will also be provided on scheduling and growing conditions, including how to persuade lettuce to germinate when it’s too hot.

Handouts

Book-signing

Demonstrations of tomato string-weaving and use of wigglewire to fasten hoophouse plastic to frames, at the New Society Publishers booth. Fri 12.30-1.30pm, 3.30-4.30pm; Sat 11.30-12.30, 5-6 pm; Sun 9.30-10 am, 11.30 am-12.30 pm.

Wigglewire is reusable every time you change the plastic on your hoophouse.
Photo Wren Vile

September 21-22 Heritage Harvest Festival, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia

Premium Workshop on Friday Sept 21, 3-4 pm Classroom 7

Feeding the Soil

In this workshop I will introduce ways to grow and maintain healthy soils: how to develop a permanent crop rotation in seven steps, and why your soil will benefit from this; how to choose appropriate cover crops; how to make compost and how to benefit from using organic mulches to feed the soil. Handouts.

Book-signing Friday 4.15 – 4.45 pm

Heritage Harvest Festival

I’m sadly not attending the Virginia State University Ginger and Turmeric Field Day, but I recommend it!

GINGER/TURMERIC FIELD DAY

OCTOBER 18, 2018

REGISTRATION WILL OPEN SOON AT EXT.VSU.EDU

Thursday, October 18, 2018, 8:00 AM 4:00 PM
VSU Randolph Farm 4415 River Road Petersburg, VA (map)

Ginger and turmeric have been used widely throughout history in many different types of cuisines for their spice and flavor, and these spices may also provide a number of health benefits.
Learn more about the production and marketing of ginger and turmeric and see how to harvest, clean and package these spice crops.
This educational event will include presentations, demonstrations and a field visit.
More details on the Field Day Agenda will be available soon.
If you are a person with a disability and desire any assistive devices, services or other accommodations to participate in this activity, please contact the Horticulture Program office at mklein@vsu.edu or call (804) 524-5960 / TDD (800) 828-1120 during business hours of 8 am. and 5 p.m. to discuss accommodations five days prior to the event.

Conferences, field days and workshops are great ways to expand our farming and gardening knowledge and fill the gaps. Perhaps you are a Beginning Farmer (defined as farmers with less than 10 years’ experience). There are many great regional associations for training new and beginning farmers and ranchers, and one of those I know best is the Future harvest CASA BFTP. This is a region-wide program, open to beginning farmers in MD, VA, DE—including the Delmarva Peninsula—and DC, WV, and PA.

A free, year-long program with 3 levels from entry-level to advanced.

Applications for the 2019 season are now OPEN!

The BFTP offers a year-long immersive training experience that combines a comprehensive classroom curriculum with hands-on learning at Chesapeake region farms that employ practices that are profitable, protect land and water, and build healthy communities.

The BFTP offers 3 training levels, designed to meet the specific needs of beginning farmers at different stages in their careers. We offer farmer-to-farmer training opportunities throughout the Chesapeake region, and classroom requirements may be completed in-person or online. We offer training in diverse operation types, including vegetables, fruit, cut flowers, herbs, and livestock at urban, peri-urban, and rural farm settings. The program is also designed with built-in scheduling flexibility to allow new farmers to further their training while maintaining their own farms or other work.

All 3 levels of the program are FREE and trainees receive a host of additional benefits:

Free admission to our popular winter conference
Free admission to our year-round field days at innovative farms
Access to a supportive network of new and experienced farmers
FHCASA membership
and more!

The final submission deadline is October 15, 2018.

Detailed program information and instructions on how to apply are on our website HERE. Questions? Please contact Sarah Sohn, BFTP Director: sarah@futureharvestcasa.org.

Events I’ll be speaking at in 2015, more new varieties

Last week I listed four events I’m booked for for next year. I’ll fill you in a bit and tell you about some more I hope to be at. My first is

Virginia Biological Farming Conference January 29-31 2015 in Richmond, Virginia. Early registration (hurry! ends 12/20) is $130 for members, $190 for non-members. So why not become a member if you aren’t already? You’ll get news all year. Conference registration covers your choice of the 25 workshops on Friday and Saturday; access to the trade show, where you can handle the tools you’re considering buying, and ask questions of the vendors; Friday dinner and Saturday lunch;

There are 3 pre-conference workshops (4 to 7 hours each) on Thursday, for $60-$75: Essential Tools & Techniques for the Small Scale Organic Vegetable Growers by Jean-Martin Fortier of The Market Gardener fame, Urban Farming Intensive with Cashawn Myer & Tenisio Seanima, and Edible Landscaping with Michael Judd and Ira Wallace (of Southern Exposure fame).

I’m giving two workshops: Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests – How to plan sowing dates for continuous supplies of popular summer crops, such as beans, squash, cucumbers, edamame and sweet corn, as well as year round lettuce. Using these planning strategies can help avoid gluts and shortages (3pm Friday); and Producing Asian Greens – Detailed information for market and home growers. Many varieties of tasty, nutritious greens grow quickly and bring fast returns. This session covers production of Asian greens outdoors and in the hoophouse. It includes tips on variety selection of over twenty types of Asian greens; timing of plantings; pest and disease management; fertility; weed management and harvesting (10.30 am Saturday). I’ll also be signing and selling books.

Bring a dish for the Friday potluck picnic at lunchtime, seeds for the seed swap, a notebook and two pens, a bag to collect handouts and so on, and if you play music, bring an instrument and some songs for the jam on Friday night.

Then the next weekend, I’m at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture Farming for a Future Conference February 4-7, 2015, at State College, PA. There are extra pre-conference sessions on Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th, then the main conference on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am speaking on Growing Great Garlic (Saturday 3.10 pm) and also on Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables (Friday 8.30 am). I also hope to be doing book-signing and sales.

February 26-28, 2015 I will be speaking at the West Virginia Small Farms Conference in Charleston, WV. That workshop will either be Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables, or Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests.

The fourth booking I have is at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello September 11-12, 2015. Too soon to name the topic.

As far as events I hope to be at, there are the Mother Earth News Fairs in Asheville, NC April 11-12, 2015, Seven Springs, PA September 18-20 2015 and Topeka, KS October 24-25 2015

Carioca Batavian lettuce. Credit Johnnys Seeds — Carioca Batavian lettuce.
Credit Johnnys Seeds

And meanwhile, this week on the farm we finished our seed ordering and started some shopping for tools and supplies. In 2015 we will repeat our variety trials to try to find a heat-tolerant eggplant variety. We were happy to find another Batavian heat-tolerant lettuce to try: Carioca from Johnny’s. With the addition of a few exceptions, we rely on Batavian lettuce varieties once the weather gets hot, to grow without bolting or getting (very) bitter. the exceptions are Jericho green romaine, De Morges Braun and New Red Fire, a looseleaf red lettuce which nearby grower Gary Scott told me about.

We are also growing some Eden Gem melons alongside our Kansas and Sun Jewel melons (and the individual-serving size Tasty Bites that I mentioned in my last post.

Peacework sweet pepper. Credit fedco Seeds — Peacework sweet pepper.
Credit fedco Seeds

We have high hopes for Peacework sweet pepper from Fedco, a very early (65 day) OP medium-thick-walled pepper “with good flavor and full-bodied sweetness.” We are always on the look-out for fast-ripening bell peppers. Because of the seed-growing business at Twin Oaks, at the end of the season we have tons of ripe peppers, but if you are growing a seed crop, there is no incentive to try to push the planting date early. So our main pepper-focus in the vegetable garden is on earliness and flavor – never forget the importance of flavor!

We are also trying Donkey spinach this year. For years we have been very happy with the reliable performance and productivity of Tyee, but Fedco tell us the producer of Tyee is a Multinational engaged in genetic engineering. If Donkey can replace Tyee we’ll be very happy!