presentations – Sustainable Market Farming

Mother Earth News Fair, string-weaving tomatoes, Organic Broadcaster

At teh New SOciety booth at the Pennsylvania Mother Earth News Fair, demonstrating how to string weave tomatoes. Photo Ingrid Witvoet/New Society — At the New Society Publishers booth at the Pennsylvania Mother Earth News Fair, demonstrating how to string weave tomatoes.
Photo Ingrid Witvoet/New Society

I got home from the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania yesterday. My two workshops went well. My Friday presentation on Fall and Winter Hoophouses was the first time I had spoken on the “main stage” – the Mother Earth News stage, with at least 600 seats. On Saturday I presented Spring and Summer Hoophouses at the GRIT Stage. Both groups had plenty of people with good questions, keeping me busy till the last minute. After the Friday presentation I signed books and chatted with people at the MEN Bookstore.

And then there were the demos. At four set times over the weekend, I got out my table-top model and showed people how to string-weave tomatoes. As you see in the photo, I had pieces of pink tinsel Christmas tree branches up-cycled into model tomato plants, with #2 pencils as stakes.

String-weaving (also known as basket-weaving and Florida string weaving) is a cheap, easy way to support lots of tomato plants, and all you need to store over the winter are the stakes. No bulky cages or heavy cattle panels or cumbersome rolls of wire mesh. True, you do need to buy twine every year, but then many of the other support methods use twine also.

The ATTRA publication Organic Tomato Production includes a comparison of different training and support methods. String-weaving comes out well in all categories. It isn’t best for high yields per plant, so people who only grow a few plants won’t choose this method. They’ll go for a more expensive and more time-consuming option. But if you have long rows, this method is ideal.

String-weaving diagram from Extension.org

Our variation on string-weaving looks fairly like this drawing from the Extension Service. We have a couple of tricks to make it work even better. As in this drawing, we use a 2ft wood stick with a hole drilled at each end and the twine running through. Our first trick is to park the bale of twine in a bucket at the beginning of the row and leave it there. No need to lug it with you! (We have long rows!) Putting the bale of twine in a bucket makes it easy to carry and provides a space to store scissors and gloves. Stand between the working end of the twine and the slack being pulled out of the bucket. That is, the spare twine will be running out behind you as you work the first side of the row. You’ll use it for the return journey. We tie the twine to the end stake, pass in front of two tomatoes and the next stake, wrap the twine around the back of the stake, pull tight, put a finger on the cross-over to hold it tight, and wrap round again, making sure that the second loop ends up below the first. This locks the twine so that if you let go, or later on a groundhog chews through your twine, the whole row doesn’t get loose.

String-weaving tomatoes. Photo Kathryn Simmons — String-weaving tomatoes.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

At the end of the row, take the tool round to the other side and work back in the same way, at the same level as the first side. You will need to flip the twine that was behind you on the first side over to your new working side as you need it. Once you reach the end, tie off the twine and cut it.

You’ll see that you never actually wrap twine around a tomato plant, so there is never any injury from tight twine. The plants are simply held between two walls of twine that you “build” by making a new round once a week as the plants grow.

At the end of the season, cut the twine and pull it out, then remove the stakes and till in the tomato plants.

The September/October edition of the Organic Broadcaster is out, and you can download the free pdf at the link. There are articles about cover crops, mushroom growing, tax planning, growing small grains, transitioning a dairy farm to organic, winter feeding of cattle, an update on avian flu and a review of the new book The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer by Jeff Carpenter with Melanie Carpenter.

The hoophouse in fall and winter, last spring planting dates, MEN Asheville

Last week I embedded my slideshow on using a hoophouse in spring and summer. Here’s the slideshow for the hoophouse in fall and winter, including some bonus material I didn’t show at the West Virginia Small farms Conference, due to time constraints:

Hoophouse in fall and winter dawling from Pam Dawling

Of course, this isn’t the season to be planting winter crops (despite the recent weather!), but you can get ideas for next winter and plan them in to your hoophouse layout, and order seeds.

I’ll be giving these two presentations at the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s April 11-12 at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center, Fletcher, NC. There you can hear me speak as well as see the slides; you’ll get a handout and you can ask questions. The Hoophouse in Spring and Summer is on Saturday 10am-11am on the Organic Gardening stage and The Hoophouse in Fall and Winter is on Sunday at 11.30am -12.30pm on the GRIT stage. I’ll also have a book signing.

One row of grapes (mostly Concord) from the north, in a warmer spring. Credit Kathryn Simmons — One row of grapes (mostly Concord) from the north, in a warmer spring.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

Meanwhile, this week in the garden, the snow has almost melted, and we had two garden shifts, on Saturday and Monday afternoons. We pruned grapes and gave compost to our younger blueberries. Mud season is everywhere. The snowmelt is being augmented by rain today. When will we ever be able to till the garden? We planted nothing in February except some shallots. “Normally” by now we would have sowed two beds of carrots, nine of peas, one of turnips and some radishes and scallions, transplanted 4 beds of spinach, one of cabbage, and a third of a bed of lettuce. We’d have beds ready for sowing more carrots and 4 beds of beets and transplanting three beds of kale and one of collards. We’d be preparing the potato patch for planting. Instead we are looking at at least a couple more weeks before we can till and several weeks before we can disk.

Obviously we can’t do it all, even if the weather suddenly became glorious rather than rainy! We have to make some tough decisions about where to take our losses. The potatoes we can just plant later, although it will cause us problems later, when we want to end the potatoes and prepare to plant fall broccoli and cabbage in the same spot. it will likely mean lower yields, as we can’t at this point find a new home for the broccoli and cabbage without infringing on our crop rotation.

The peas still have a chance. We plant peas in the middles of beds of overwintered spinach. So we don’t need to till, just weed, then sow. We reckon we can plant peas until 3/31 in central Virginia. Veggie Harvest agrees.

I’ve been researching last worthwhile planting dates for spring. There are plenty of tables of last planting dates for fall, but fewer for spring. Here’s what we came up with:

3/16 Turnips (Virginia Extension) – so we abandoned plans for those.

3/31 Peas (date from our records, confirmed by Veggie Harvest)

4/1 Kale and collards transplants (our records, confirmed by Veggie Harvest)

4/8 Spinach transplants (our records. Va Ext says 3/16, VH says late April, Barbara Pleasant says average last frost date. Ours is 4/20). So we’re in the middle, maybe risk later than we were going to. But it can turn hot fast here!

4/15 Beets (our records. VH says late April, so maybe we could try a little later)

We also have 3/15 as the last spring date to sow clovers and 3/31 as the last spring date to sow oats for cover crop.

We’re going to reconsider each week, looking at this list for reference. We’ve already also decided to cut out two beds of spring carrots, as we reckon we wouldn’t have time to deal with them all, even if we could get them planted. we have plenty of stored ones from the fall planting, still in good shape.

And, despite the challenges outdoors, we are potting up peppers for the hoophouse.

Pepper seedlings in the greenhouse. Credit Kathryn Simmons — Pepper seedlings in the greenhouse.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

March Events

I have two events in March, where I am making presentations. The first is an online conference (no travel costs!)

CSA Expert Exchange:

An Online Conference

Presented in partnership with Small Farm Central

March 6 – Want to Start a CSA?
Beginning Farmers Session
7:00pm-9:30pm ESTMarch 7 – CSA Expert Exchange Main Event
11:00am-3:30pm EST

I am speaking on Crop Planning on Friday at 1.40pm.

Then on Sunday March 16, is the rescheduled day at Lynchburg College (postponed from February 15 because of all the snow). I am speaking on Feeding the Soil.

Ira, Cindy and Pam working on our presentations. Photo Betsy Trice