Strange Roots, Podcast and Video, News Round-Up

Strange Roots

 

A 10 pound purple ube grown in North Carolina by Yanna Fishman.

Here’s an ube, a true yam/Dioscorea alata. This amazing photo is from Yanna Fishman in Union Mills, NC. She grew this in her garden. It’s all one root, one season’s growth from a small section of a root. She has also had success growing both the white and purple yam from aerial tubers.

Grower Jim in Florida has more information on ubes.

 Yanna’s second photo shows a selection of unusual roots she grew. She is launching herself on a ‘tropical perennials as temperate annuals’ trial

Tropical roots grown in North Carolina by Yanna Fishman. See key below

Clockwise from top root with green stem:

Taro (2 types)    Colocasia esculenta

Arrowroot    Maranta arundinacea

Malanga     Xanthosoma  sagittifolium

White yam      Dioscorea alata

Purple ube yam     Dioscorea alata

Jicama     Pachyrhizus erosus

Yuca/cassava     Manihot esculenta

Groundnut     Apios americana

Ginger   Zingiber officinale

Yacon      Smallanthus sonchifolius

Achira   Canna edulis

Center:

Water chestnut    Eleocharis dulcis

Turmeric (3 types)    Curcuma longa

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A video and a podcast

Josh Sattin of Sattin Hill Farm  came out to our farm to film me talking about farming and Twin Oaks Community and you can see that here. Not sure if I’ve been around long enough to be a legend, but Twin Oaks has.

Legendary Farmer on a Legendary Commune

https://youtu.be/vLzFd4YP9dI

If you want to see more of Josh’s videos, here’s his contact info:

Josh Sattin – YouTube

Instagram (@sattinhillfarm) – www.instagram.com/sattinhillfarm

Website – https://www.sattinhillfarm.com/

Jesse Frost of No-Till Growers

interviewed me for his No-Till Market Market Garden Podcast and you can listen to it here:

Scroll down past the photo and the sponsor plugs to get to the place to click for the podcast.

It’s also on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75gRIl0Hzs

Here’s Jesse’s contact info:

No-Till Growers Website – https://www.notillgrowers.com/ Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/FarmerJesse YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLhu… Instagram @notillgrowers – https://www.instagram.com/notillgrowers/

Following the interview, Jesse’s friend and colleague Josh Sattin visited and made his video.


Cold-hardiness

Frosty Mizuna in January.
Photo Bridget Aleshire
Mother Earth News

has published my blog post Which Vegetable Crops Survive Cold Weather? Knowing at what temperature various crops will die, and watching weather forecasts will help us act in time to save our crops.

Cold-hardiness of Cauliflower

And a blog reader, Andy Montague, has passed along the info that his cauliflower was damaged by temperature around 19F (-7C), while his broccoli, cabbage, collards, and Brussels sprouts were unharmed.  This illustrates that cauliflower is the cole crop most susceptible to cold.

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Growing for Market Newsletter

Growing for Market magazine has launched a free monthly newsletter. The current issue includes articles on How to Improve CSA Retention Rates, and growing garlic (I wrote that one), and a special offer on a bundle of two no-till books. I see you can even get the newsletter translated instantly into a wide range of languages!

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Sustainable Farming News Round-up

Study Demonstrates Economic Efficiency of Agroecological Management
A study published in Scientia Horticulturae compared conventional, organic-input, and organic agroecological blueberry production systems in Chile. A farm that used organic management based on agroecological principles achieved the highest yield and also had the lowest cost of production, showing agroecology as the most efficient production system from both an environmental and an economic perspective.
Related ATTRA Publication: Blueberries: Organic Production

Key Perennial Crops information sheets (info from ATTRA)

The Savanna Institute has produced a new series of free “Key Perennial Crop” information sheets in collaboration with the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and the USDA-SARE program. The information sheets offer descriptions of 12 key Midwestern agroforestry crops: Aronia, Asian Pear, Black Currant, Black Walnut, Chinese Chestnut, Cider Apple, Elderberry, Hazelnut, Honeyberry, Northern Pecan, Pawpaw, and Serviceberry. They are available free online.
Related ATTRA Publication: Fruit Trees, Bushes, and Vines for Natural Growing in the Ozarks

Forest Farming Could Make Medicinal Plant Harvest Sustainable (from ATTRA)

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University say that forest farming could provide a model for the future of forest botanical supply chains. They say that transitioning from wild collection to forest farming as a source of medicinal herbs such as ginseng would create a sustainable supply chain, not only in terms of the environment, but also in terms of social justice for people who harvest the plants. The researchers point out that forest farming would allow more transparency in the supply chain, which could lead not only to better-quality herbal products, but also to a reliable and stable income for forest farmers.

Related ATTRA Publication: Ginseng, Goldenseal, and Other Native Roots

eOrganic has published a Weed Tour

A Virtual Tour of Major Weed Plant Families

by Mark Schonbeck of the Organic Farming Research Foundation

Harvesting, Curing and Post Harvest Care of Pumpkins and Winter Squash

You’ve worked hard to grow healthy pumpkins and winter squash. Keep them that way off the vine using these best practices.

There’s An App for That!

Wondering where to dig post holes or construct a pond or building on your property? Want help determining the production capability of your land? You can answer those questions and many more with SoilWeb, a free app that gives you quick access to Soil Survey data through your mobile device

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/newsroom/releases/?cid=NRCSEPRD1466260

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A Conference to Look Forward to

 

The Southern SAWG Annual Conference is well-known for providing the practical tools and solutions you need at our annual conference. It is the must-attend event for those serious about sustainable and organic farming and creating more vibrant community food systems! This popular event attracts farmers and local food advocates from across the nation each year. This year, we have 101 “field-tested” presenters, a full slate of hot-topic conference sessions and pre-conference courses, five field trips, a forum, a poster display and a trade show. New this year! 2020 Special Topic: Agricultural Resilience in a Changing Climate.

There are scholarships for limited-resource farmers. Pre-conference intensives, a two-day general conference, a trade show, networking opportunities, research posters. Learn more about the great sessions planned for 2020.

Jamaica Sustainable Farm Enterprise Program

 

I’m back from Jamaica, compiling my trip report. I went as a volunteer with a farmer-to-farmer training project for 9 days (plus two travel days). I was a volunteer with the FLORIDA ASSOCIATION FOR VOLUNTEER ACTION IN THE CARIBBEAN AND THE AMERICAS (FAVACA), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) From the American People established by John F Kennedy in 1961. USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. One of the FAVACA programs is the Jamaica Sustainable Farm Enterprise Program.

For those who don’t know Jamaica at all, let’s start with a map of the island, which is south of Cuba.

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I was hosted by the Source Farm Ecovillage, Johns Town, St Thomas Parish, Jamaica. Here’s a more detailed map with St Thomas parish colored in pink. The Source Farm is east of Morant Bay, very near the coast.

The Source Farm Foundation and Learning Village is a multi-cultural, inter-generational eco-village, located in Johns Town, in the parish of St. Thomas, Jamaica.

“Our ecological mission and vision is to respect natural life, its systems and processes – preserving wildlife and botanical habitat, and creating a life-style that regenerates, rather than diminishes the integrity of the source farm environment.”

Here is a 2014 site map, showing roughly what buildings are there, and where the gardens are located. Actually the gardens have expanded quite a bit since this map was drawn.

I stayed in Earthbag 1, a house built of stacked bags of bauxitic soil with cement, rendered over with cement, giving an adobe effect. The structure stayed fairly cool. The windows had no glass, but insect screens and wood louvered shutters. I’ve never actually had a house to myself before, even a small one like this!

The newer houses in the eco-village are monolithic concrete domes, which hold up very well against hurricanes, earthquakes and termites. Jamaica is rich in marl (lime) and other minerals, and there is a cement works near Kingston. Because many other homes on the island are built from concrete block covered with cement rendering, there are many workers skilled in rendering, who can quickly adapt to dome houses.

I got to taste many kinds of mango, passion fruit, star fruit, star apple, ackee, bammy (cassava flatbread), yam, breadfruit, callalloo (amaranth leaves) and meringa seeds, as well as foods I was already familiar with. I had an especially lovely supper with Nicola and Julia, of snapper with bammy and festival (described by April Jackson on The Yummy Truth as a Jamaican savory beignet made with cornmeal), and Red Stripe beer at Fish Cove Restaurant by the ocean.

Festival, bammy and fish in Jamaica.
Photo https://theyummytruth.wordpress.com/tag/jamaican-fried-fish/

http://thesourcefarm.com/the-farm/what-is-on-the-farm/

Photo courtesy of
The Source Farm

My teaching work was organized by the people at Source Farm and included the whole group of farmers in JSFEP. The schedule included several farm visits, but unfortunately it rained very hard for four or five days (this was meant to be the dry season!) and many areas were flooded. One farmer told me that the biggest challenges to farming in Jamaica are climate change and theft. Both are serious. The heavy rains I experienced showed how much damage unusual weather can cause. At one farm, where a co-operative onion-growing project was underway, one farmer got trapped by rising waters and had to be helped by two other farmers to swim and wade through the wild waters. After that, the farmers in the group had to take turns to guard the place so that the drip irrigation equipment didn’t get stolen. Another farmer told me about losing an entire crop of sweet potatoes one night – someone dug up the whole lot. The thefts, of course, are related to poverty and desperation in some cases, and a culture where each person has to take what they need as there is little in the way of government support. And a history of colonialism with sugar cane and banana cash crops, followed by a crashing economy.

The roads are in poor shape and in rural areas people rely on calling taxis to get from one place to another. Everyone needs a phone to live this way, and I saw some very battered up phones and chargers carefully repaired and kept running. Arranging a meeting time requires a flexible attitude about timeliness.

The farmers were looking at increasing production, planning planting quantities, scheduling succession plantings, and considering new crops. I met one-on-one with a few farmers, and I did some research into the possibilities of growing asparagus and garlic in the tropics, for a couple of them. I had to get my head round the idea of planting a sequence of three crops each needing four months. No winter cover crop cycle. Cover crops are very different from ours. Some overlap – sorghum-sudangrass, sunn-hemp. But no place for winter cereals! The principle of feeding the soil stays the same, using legumes to add nitrogen, bulky cover crops to smother weeds and add biomass.

I was teaching vegetable crop planning, crop rotations, and scheduling co-operative harvests to help the farmers double their presence at the Ujima Natural Farmers Market  to every Saturday rather than very other Saturday, starting in June. The demand for sustainably grown fresh local produce exists, and farmers are interested in learning to boost production.

On the second Saturday I was there, I gave a workshop on crop planning, to 22 farmers, and we got some lively discussion going, as they offered each other tips, and diagnosed some diseased carrots (looked like nematodes to me).

I treasure the time I spent in Jamaica, even though it wasn’t all sunshine and mangoes. I met many wonderful farmers and enjoyed my stay in the Source ecovillage, which reminded me somewhat of Twin Oaks Community, where I live in Virginia.

 

 

 

 

Video Review: The Market Gardener’s Toolkit by Jean-Martin Fortier

Les Jardins de la Grelinete (Broadfork Farm)
Les Jardins de la Grelinete (Broadfork Farm)

Photo from Les Jardins de la Grelinette in Saint-Armand, Quebec, Canada.

Photo from Les Jardins de la Grelinette in Saint-Armand, Quebec, Canada.

The Market Gardener’s Toolkit by Jean-Martin Fortier is now hqdefaultavailable for sale online on DVD or Digital Download. $25.49 and $15.49 respectively. Worth every penny! It’s 80 minutes of very inspiring and immediately useful information on small scale sustainable vegetable growing.

The Market Gardener’s Toolkit is an educational documentary featuring Jean-Martin Fortier, small-scale vegetable grower and author of the bestselling book The Market Gardener. In the film, he shares his tools and techniques for successful, profitable, human-scale vegetable growing. From soil preparation to strategies on dealing with insect pests, discover how this micro-farm manages to generate $150,000 in sales annually – without the use of a tractor or any heavy machinery.

hqdefaultThere is also a teaser or two on YouTube here and here.

I participated in the crowd-funding effort to help get this video made, and so I am now the happy owner of a digital download. I’ve watched it once, and am now organizing a group showing for our crew and neighboring gardeners.

I loved every precious minute of this video. It made me proud to be a vegetable grower, using sustainable techniques, contributing to a healthy local food supply. It made me inspired to try harder to use more effective and efficient methods. The aerial views and plan of their plots and crop rotation are inspiring and beautiful.

outbp-derpaillisIt was valuable to see tools in action, such as the broadfork, the five row flamer, the Terrateck manual mulch layer and the home-made precision vacuum seeder.

It was helpful (and fun!) to see the speeded-up version of the farmers moving the large sheets of “occultation plastic” (poly silage covers) used for weed control. It was encouraging to be reminded (after too many years of battling weedy gardens) that clean productive gardens are possible and, indeed, wise. They are more productive, more satisfying, more profitable, with less wasted time. I get it that hand-pulling weeds is more like first aid for a garden gone sadly wrong. I know it’s better to hoe when weeds are tiny, to flame and to prevent weeds from coming up in the first place. We’ve been doing better this year on preparing “stale seed beds” by tilling and prepping the bed at least week before we need it, then scuffle-hoeing on the day before planting. This one change is really making a noticeable difference in our gardens.

Last winter I had been thinking we needed to get a cultivating tractor, and to re-arrange our garden plots for tractor access and accept the turnaround space lost to crops that tractors require. And accept the increased use of fossil fuels, and time spent fixing machines. Watching The Market Gardener’s Toolkit instead reaffirmed the high value of intensive use of garden soils and smart manual work. This fits with the series of books I’ve been reading recently: Ben Hartman’s The Lean Farm, Curtis Stone’s Urban Farmer, Colin McCrate and Brad Halm’s High-Yield Vegetable Gardening, and of course Jean-Martin Fortier’s Market Gardener and Eliot Coleman’s work.

These books emphasize the importance of thinking clearly about what crops you grow and why. In the case of purely commercial growers, it is plain to see that some crops are much more financially worthwhile than others. Some find more ready sales than others. Some grow much quicker than others, enabling the space to be used for another crop in the same season, meaning more income (or simply more food, if you aren’t selling your crops). Our situation at Twin Oaks Community is a bit different. We are growing food to feed the community of a hundred people, year round, as best we can manage it. Commercial growers can specialize in baby salad mix and sell it at a good price at market or to restaurants. They can put a large amount of land and time into such crops. They can ignore winter root crops, or space-hogging sweet corn or time-hogging green beans. We, instead, need to figure out how to efficiently grow as many different vegetable crops as possible. That is why my book, Sustainable Market Farming focuses on production techniques and organization and planning. Although we are not tied to growing according to the relative financial profitability of different crops, we do need to plan our use of space and time, and not get distracted growing demanding crops that are difficult in our climate and don’t provide a decent-sized chunk of our diet. This is why we have stopped growing bulb fennel and parsnips, for instance. And why we do grow sweet potatoes

Beauregard sweet potatoes on biodegradable plastic mulch. Photo Bridget Aleshire
Beauregard sweet potatoes on biodegradable plastic mulch.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

Jean-Martin Fortier also has a series of 13 YouTubes.  The Market Gardener, Six Figure Farming, Living Web Farms: Part 1, Introduction and Part 2, Getting Started and more: Bio-Intensive Farming, Cropping Systems, Compost Strategies, Soil Management, Cover Crops, Seeders, Weed Prevention, Seedlings & Transplants, Crop Planning, Insect Control, Market & CSA .


You may remember I reviewed Jean-Martin’s Book The Market Gardener. His book has sold over 80,000 copies, and is the winner of the American Horticultural Society 2015 Book Award and the  Living Now 2015 Book Award.

You can buy the book on his website.

Workshops, weather and slideshow tribulations

Overwintered Vates kale. Photo credit Twin Oaks Community
Overwintered Vates kale.
Photo credit Twin Oaks Community

Yesterday I gave my three hour presentation “Providing for the Full Eating Season” to the Local Food Hub in Charlottesville,VA. I’d guess there were 50 people there, and 11 of them bought copies of my book!

A question came up that I don’t know the answer to, and now it has me curious. Do leave a comment if you have an answer. Some professional growers need to know how to allow for the slowing rate of crop maturity going into winter, when deciding how much of a crop to grow. Because we at Twin Oaks don’t sell our food, we can simply provide a transition from warm (or cool) weather crops to cold weather crops, without worrying exactly on the quantity of each. Those selling at farmers’ markets or CSAs could possibly do similarly. But those selling wholesale need a certain amount of a crop – either a box or no box – but not half a box. Naturally, all growers need to look at what is worthwhile.

I think in our gardens we have simply made our decisions based on experience, without a numerical base. I can say that 7 x 4 x 90ft of kale will provide 10 gallons of leaves at least three times a week in November, December, February, March. Not January maybe. I’ve never actually counted. And five outdoor beds of spinach (each 4 rows X 90ft) under thick rowcover, combined with about 700 row feet in the hoophouse will be plenty for 100 people for the winter. And we can eat more than 700 leeks per month from October to February. But’s that’s about all I know. Per person, that’s about 25 feet of kale, 20 feet of spinach and maybe 20 feet of leeks for winter in Virginia.

A bed of overwintered leeks Photo credit Twin Oaks Community
A bed of overwintered leeks
Photo credit Twin Oaks Community

In my last post I said we’d had an overnight low of 10F, but in reality it only dropped to 14F. We were lucky with the last winter storm. We didn’t get snow, only got a thinnish build up of ice from freezing rain, and din’t lose power except for 15 minutes on Monday, presumably due to our supplier switching off while reconnecting those who had lost power. Now it looks like we’re in for more cold winter-storm weather.

I have in the past uploaded my slideshow presentations to SlideShare.net, but they closed down my account saying I was guilty of “violating SlideShare’s Terms of Service and/or Community Guidelines.” I can’t imagine what I can have done wrong, so I’ve appealed. The wheels of progress grind slowly. Meanwhile you can find my June 2013 presentation on Planning Fall Crops at Virginia State University; my Growing Great Garlic presentation at CFSA, uploaded by Fred Broadbent. VABF has my Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops presentation.

If anyone knows other ways I can upload slideshows, please speak up.

Crop review time, harvesting potatoes, frosts and foliage

Beech tree in November foliage, Credit Ezra Freeman

Beech tree in November foliage,
Credit Ezra Freeman

We’ve had a night of 24F and two of 26F, so the season is really changing. Here’s a photo from Ezra’s blog A Year In the Woods of a beech, one of the last trees with good foliage.

In the garden we’ve been setting up the spinach beds for the winter, weeding and filling gaps. We had really good spinach germination this fall, but then the seedlings got eaten by grasshoppers or something, so we have been moving plants from where they are closely spaced to where there are gaps. Spinach is an important winter crop for us. Kale is another, and happily we finally got a good stand of that, after resowing.

We’ve also finished screening compost into our cinder block greenhouse beds. This will be our spring seedling compost and we like having it all ready to use (not frozen in a lump as it would be when we start in mid-January if we stored it outside). Over the winter we grow lettuce in the compost in the beds, and the roots and the watering help mellow the compost into a lovely condition.

Yesterday we had our annual Crop Review meeting where we gather to talk over the successes and failures of the past season and start to consider what to do differently next year. Us five Full Crew were there, along with a few of the more casual helpers and also our Food Processing Manager and our Cooks Manager. This was a horribly hard season, starting with losing a couple of key people and having a very wet spring which grew lots of weeds and got us off to a very late start. We had to cancel several crops we had planned to grow (celeriac, lots of onions, kohlrabi, peanuts) and we lost several more to weeds after we’d planted them (leeks, Chinese cabbage, winter radish, some of the turnips and beets). Unsurprisingly, we are planning on a more manageable garden next year, so we can build up our strength and be more successful with what we do grow. Plus we’ll have a substantial bank of weed seeds to cope with.

We also used the meeting time to pop garlic cloves in preparation for planting later this week. I suppose most of you would call it next week. At Twin Oaks our weeks start on Fridays and end on Thursdays, for reasons almost lost in the mists of time. Nowadays I suspect we just like the quaintness of it.

Now we are starting to harvest our second potatoes (“Irish” potatoes) which we planted in July (late, like much else this year). We bush-hogged the tops two weeks ago, so that the potato skins could thicken up and be ready to harvest before it got too, too cold. Today we will remove the hay mulch and the dried up vines and weeds, to the compost pile, and tomorrow we’ll start harvesting.

We have a Checchi and Magli SP100 potato digger, which you can see in action on YouTube. Here’s ours

Our Checchi and Magli potato digger
Our Checchi and Magli potato digger

The other main work going on in the garden is getting cover crops planted. Here are before and after photos of one plot:

Late sweet corn and sweet potatoes Credit Ezra Freeman
Late sweet corn and sweet potatoes
Credit Ezra Freeman
Late corn undersown with oats, noew mowed high, and the sweet potato patch now sown in winter wheat and crimson clover. Credit Ezra Freeman
Late corn undersown with oats, now mowed high, and the sweet potato patch now sown in winter wheat and crimson clover.
Credit Ezra Freeman

Sweet potatoes, statistics and inspiration

A bumper crop of sweet potatoes. Credit McCune Porter
A bumper crop of sweet potatoes.
Credit McCune Porter

After a week of drizzle, it finally eased up and we started harvesting our sweet potatoes. I wrote a lot about this topic last year, so I won’t go into many details here. As usual, we set the dug roots in clusters, so we could see which plants yielded most and chose medium-sized roots from those to grow our slips next year. In the picture above, we are crating the sweet potatoes after someone has gone through selecting the seed roots. In the right background you can see our grid-linked solar array. In the left background is our hoophouse, and to the left is our dying last sweet corn planting. We have one last picking today, from the Silver Queen at the far end. We used a low electric fence around this patch to keep the raccoons out, and either it worked, or the beasts didn’t notice this planting. We didn’t get any visits from tigers or elephants either! Also visible in the photo above are remaining bits of the bioplastic biodegradable mulch we used. It’s made from non-GMO corn, and is great for warm-weather loving vining crops.

Not everyone likes jumbo sweet potatoes, but for those cooking for a hundred, they
Not everyone likes jumbo sweet potatoes, but for those cooking for a hundred, they save a lot of time. Credit McCune Porter

This year, the Georgia Jet seem more productive than the Beauregard – I think that’s usual. We dug about a third of the crop the first day and got 86 boxes. The second day we had a lot of other harvesting (beans and broccoli being the most time-consuming), so we only dug another 36 boxes. We’re still only 45% of the way down the patch, so we could end up with 250 or more boxes. Probably the yield will taper off closer to the end of the field as the deer were browsing on the vines all summer.

Friday update: Well, we finished harvesting yesterday, and the yield dropped off a lot where the deer had been browsing (memo: fence out the deer in future!) We got a total of 177 boxes of various sizes, perhaps about 3939 pounds, almost two tons. That’s not a record-breaker, but is second best in the past ten years.

Our yearly harvest of sweet potatoes has varied a lot, from 31 boxes (a sad year) to 243 in 2009. An average over ten years of 112 boxes, each weighing perhaps 23 pounds. We grow about 800 row feet. We always hope to have enough to last till the beginning of May, when people start to lose interest in sweet potatoes, and start hoping for tomatoes.

Now I’ve glided smoothly into the statistics section of this post, so I’ll tell you some figures for my book sales while I’m at it. New Society has sold 3320 to mid-September, from a 5000 print run. They say the book is selling well, not many returns. At Twin Oaks we’ve sold 150 of the 250 we bought in February when it came out. I’ve just set up an Author Page at Amazon, so I can tell you they have sold 940 print copies up till 10/6. They also provide me with ranking info (this could get addictive if I let it!) and my book was #40,116 when I looked. That sounds pathetic till you realize that’s out of 8 million titles. Anyway, enough vanity! As far as its usefulness to readers, having an Author Page means that if you go to Amazon, to my book page, and then click on my name, you can read my bio, and see my upcoming events, and get back to this blog.

Getting perspective on the bookselling world, I was encouraged to learn that there is being a resurgence of small booksellers, despite the Big Online One. Here’s a link to the story in the Christian Science Monitor in March this year. I learned about it from Wendy Welch of the Little Bookstore at Big Stone Gap, who I met at the Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. She has written a memoir about her bookstore, called The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, which you can buy via her website, or, I’m sure, at her store.

And now on to this Inspiring story: At the Mother Earth News Fair I met a young woman of 12 who had borrowed my book from her library. She got inspired and decided to start market gardening. She succeeded in clearing $6000 in her first year, when she was 11!

Frost, tomatoes, sun, rain, mistakes and future events

Tomato Seedlings in the greenhouse earlier in spring. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Tomato Seedlings in the greenhouse earlier in spring.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

What a week! With the forecast for low temperatures on Sunday and Monday nights this past week, we back-pedaled on our transplanting plans. The tomato plants in our coldframe were very tall. In order to cover them we extended the cold-frame height by balancing plastic crates on top of the blockwork walls. Setting the lids on top of this construction was a bit precarious, but it worked well. Only a few of the taller tomatoes got nipped at the very top on Monday night when the temperature plummeted to 30F. 5/14 is very late for a last frost for us. Our average for the past ten years is 4/30, but in 2009 it was 5/19. In 2011 it was 4/14. Farming is full of surprises!

Tomato Transplants in the cold-frame. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Tomato Transplants in the cold-frame.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

On Tuesday we started transplanting tomatoes. Hot dry windy weather. On Wednesday 5/15 it reached 90F. On Thursday afternoon we planned to continue the big transplanting of our Roma paste tomatoes. Three rows are in mowed no-till rye, vetch and winter peas cover crop and one row is on black biodegradable plastic mulch. (Here’s an interesting link to a comparison of the two biggest brands of biodegradable plastic mulch. http://extension.udel.edu/ag/files/2012/03/2012DegradableMulchWM.pdf) But Thursday’s shift was inauspicious. We started with only 5 of us (we plan for 7). One person had to leave at 4pm. One person was called away to bale hay. Another person agreed to provide childcare for the person baling hay, from 4-6pm. Then another person started to feel ill, and left the scene. The 3 of us still working at 3pm started to sow our second zucchini and summer squash. We each used two dowels to make holes every 6″ in the biodegradable plastic mulch. We got the holes popped through, but then another community member cycled by and warned us of a strong thunderstorm heading right for us. Discretion being the better part of valor, we retired for a tea-break and to consult the local radar on Wunderground. An intense “red and yellow” storm, not very wide (ie not very long-lasting), was due any minute. Once it started to rain we decided to quit trying to garden for the day. good thing too. We got an inch of rain in an hour. Too bad the soil hadn’t dried out enough for us to do a second hilling of the potatoes before this new rain. or make ridges for sweet potatoes. Now we’ll have to wait another week, during which there is 20-80% chance of some rain every day except Monday, when it is forecast to be foggy. So I’m getting closer to finishing reading my library book. . .

April 2013 Growing for Market
April 2013 Growing for Market

Meanwhile, in the Mental Gardening Department, I found I had made mistakes in my Growing for Market articles on parsnips and fennel, about which plants can cross-pollinate each other. So I wrote an apology and correction. One of these mistakes is in my book. In case you are reading my former, deluded, beliefs, here is the correction: On parsnips, the facts are that parsnips can cross with wild parsnip, but not with carrots or Queen Anne’s Lace, as I wrongly claimed.

On fennel, the facts are that fennel does not cross with anything except other fennel. It is widely said (even by some seed companies!) that dill and fennel cross, and some even describe the terrible flavor of the resulting crosses. Clearly this is a superstitious belief that continues because acting on the belief produces good fennel (or dill) seed. Similar to how someone might snap their fingers to keep away tigers – no tigers – complete success! I’ve long believed dill and fennel crossed. It’s good to know I don’t need to worry about that any more.

This is the first error I’ve found in my book. Soon New Society wants a list of corrections from me, for when they do a reprint. I’ve only found this and one formatting glitch so far. Embarrassing, but I repeat my Mantra for Consolation: “The only people who never make mistakes are those who don’t do anything.” On Monday I did an interview for Lightly on the Ground Radio on wrir.org (Richmond Independent Radio) with Sunny Gardener. I’m learning how to find and download the podcast (so many technical skills to learn!) I’m working on a powerpoint presentation on Planning Fall Vegetable Production, for Virginia State University’s Summer Vegetable and Berry Field Day on June 27 at Randolph Farm. This will lead nicely to my Last Chance Sowings article for the August Growing for Market and a Cold-Hardy Winter Vegetables presentation for the Mother Earth News Fair in September

Here’s my list of upcoming presentations and workshops:

June 27 VSU Randolph Farm. Planning Fall Vegetable Production

August 19-20 Allegheny Mountain School, VA

September 6-7 Heritage Harvest Festival, Monticello, near Charlottesville, VA. Asian Greens, and Succession Planting for Continuous Harvests

September 20-22 Mother Earth News Fair, Seven Springs, PA. Cold-Hardy Winter Vegetables

October 12-13  Mother Earth News Fair, Lawrence, KS perhaps

December 12 Local Food Hub, Scottsville, VA. Succession Planting for Continuous Harvests, and Winter Hardy Vegetables

Twin Oaks Garden Task List for February

Greenhouse interior with early spring seedling flats.Photo Kathryn Simmons
Greenhouse interior with spring seedling flats.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

PlanningWeek 1:  Revise Crop Planting Quantities chart, Perennials worksheet, Harvest and Food Processing Calendars, Veg Finder, and Phenology Chart. Week 2:  Revise Fall Brassicas Spreadsheet, Onion Plan and Log, Sweet Potato Plan. Revise and post Paracrew Invitation. Week 3: Write Seed Saving Letter. Revise Blueberry Map and Log, Grape Map and Log. Week 4: Revise Crop Planting Specs sheet, revise Garden Planning Calendar, File notes, prune files.

Lettuce Factory: Sow lettuce #3, 4 in flats (short-day fast varieties, every 14 days).

Spread compost & till beds for spinach, beets, favas, lettuce, onions, little alliums, turnips, senposai, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, collards when soil dry enough.  Till beds for carrots 1-3, with or without compost.

#1 Spring Tractor Work  – Compost and disk areas for broccoli and potatoes when dry enough, or till.

Early Feb: in greenhouse sow: cabbage, collards, senposai, kale, kohlrabi, broccoli #1, celery, celeriac

Sow spinach outdoors if Jan sowings fail: 4oz/bed pre-sprouted. Transplant spinach from hoophouse [or flats].

Sow fava beans (seed is in peas bucket). Plant small potato onions if not done in January.

Mid-month: in greenhouse: Sow lettuce #3, and resow hoophouse peppers as needed. Spot cabbage, lettuce#3, hoophouse peppers, kale, collards, and harden off.

February pepper seedlings in the greenhousePhoto Kathryn Simmons
February pepper seedlings in the greenhouse
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Sow carrots #1 outdoors with indicator beets. Flameweed. Finish planting spinach, (direct sow if not enough transplants).

Buy seed potatoes mid-month and set out to greensprout (chit) before planting: 65°F (19°C) and light.

[Strawberries: plant new bought plants, if applicable.]

Late Feb, sow carrots # 2 (flameweed);

Really finish transplanting spinach. If needed, presprout 4oz/bed spinach for 1 week before sowing.

Till and sow areas for clover cover crops (eg grapes, eggplant beds), or oats, from 2/15.                    

Transplant fall-sown onions ½-3/4” deep, when no thicker than pencils. Weed over-wintered spinach, kale, collards.

In greenhouse sow broccoli #2 (2 weeks after 2nd), (shallots), lettuce #4, hoophouse cukes.

Perennials: Finish weeding. Give compost, if not done in fall, including strawberries and grapes.  See list for January.  Transplant bushes, canes, crowns if needed. Mulch. Finish pruning blueberries, ribes. Prune grapes before 3/21 – see last year’s log notes about replacement limbs needed, etc. Summer raspberries: cut out old canes. Install irrigation. Prepare sites for new grapevines, if needed.

Vates kale over-wintered Photo Twin Oaks Community
Vates kale over-wintered
Photo Twin Oaks Community

Harvest: (Chard?), collards, kale, spinach, leeks.

Presentation at VABF Conference

My next presentation will be at Healthy Soil, Healthy Crops, Healthy Livestock, the Virginia Biological Farming Conference  at the Holiday Inn-Koger Center in Richmond, Virginia, February 8-9. I’m also hosting one of the Farm Tours on the Thursday before the conference (see below).

My presentation is on Saturday Feb 9, 10:30 am – 12:00 noon

Session 4. Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops, Pam Dawling, Twin Oaks Community, Louisa, VA:

Pam Dawling writes for Growing for Market magazine. She has been growing vegetables at Twin Oaks Community in Central Virginia for over 20 years, where the gardens feed 100 people on 3.5 acres. Her book Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres, published by New Society Publishers on February 1, 2013, will be on sale at the conference. The workshop will discuss cover crops suitable at various times of year in our Virginia climate, particularly winter cover crops between vegetable crops in successive years. She will provide ideas to help you design a sequence of vegetable crops which maximizes the chance to grow good cover crops as well as reduce pest and disease likelihood. She will include examples of undersowing of cover crops in vegetable crops and of no-till options. She will discuss formal rotations as well as ad hoc systems for shoehorning minor crops into available spaces.

I’ll be at the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange booth when I’m not at a workshop, perched on the end of their table, with a big stack of books, signing and selling. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange will be selling the book at their booth at all the events they go to throughout the year, and through their catalog.

vabfThe Keynote speaker Karl Hammer of Vermont Compost Company will describe an Integrated System for Production of Poultry and Compost. The Friday plenary will feature Tradd Cotter of Mushroom Mountain who will discuss Using Mycorrhizae to Improve Soil Fertility and Plant Health. Other speakers include: Kristin Kimball, author of The Dirty Life,  and her husband Mark Kimball, on crop and soil management at Essex Farm in New York, where they run a complete diet CSA, (I just reviewed her book!); Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming with Microbes, for a primer on the soil food web; Kit Pharo of Cheyenne Wells, CO, on minimum input beef cattle production, and me, on Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops. I’m on at 10.30 am on Saturday February 9.

Full sessions schedule found here.

New this year: Conference meals will feature all major ingredients from Virginia’s sustainable farms! (Friday lunch and dinner, Saturday lunch). Friday dinner will feature our new “Fresh Chef Trifecta”: Three local chefs will face off to offer the best and most delicious demonstration of local, seasonal fare. (In February, no less!)

If you can’t make it to the entire conference, tickets are available for just the Friday night dinner, cooking demonstrations, and keynote speech by Karl Hammer.

Separate from the Conference itself, VABF is hosting two workshops and Farm Tours on  Thursday, February 7th (Registration is separate but located on the same webpage.) There are two all-day workshops and two farm tour options. Workshops take place at and tours depart from the same hotel/conference center as the Conference.

Farm School for Beginners: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm – This One Day Farm School course utilizes the Whole Farm Planning curriculum developed as part of the Virginia Beginner Farmer and Rancher Coalition from Virginia Tech. The course is designed for those with 10 years or less farming experience, and includes presentations from successful farmers as well as extensive hand-outs and resources from the Whole Farm Planning curriculum. Complementary Farm Tour component on Friday morning. $75 – Lunch is included. 

Farm School – Advanced Vegetable Production: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm – The owner of Victory Farms, Inc., Charlie Collins has grown for restaurants and farmer’s markets in Phoenix, Arizona and Richmond, Virginia for nearly 20 years, most recently running a 400+ member CSA.  His methods yield significant production and very high quality.  He has been Certified Naturally Grown for all 10 of CNG’s years as a farmer-run certification program. With specific focus on vegetables, greens, herbs, and vining fruits, Charlie will offer insight into medium to large-scale production, harvesting and storage techniques, transportation and distribution, and farm business management. He will also talk about how to establish workable roles on the farm to avoid burn out, delegating to employees, interns or volunteers, and the cycle of a farm and CSA over several years.  Discussion is encouraged so bring your questions! Minimum enrollment required. $85 members, $95 non-members – Lunch is included. 

Farm Tours: Will depart from the Holiday Inn-Koger Center at 9 am. $40 members, $45 non-members. Lunch and transportation provided.

Option 1: Commercial Compost, and Dairy/Poultry/Pork/Beef – Watkins Nurseries‘ commercial compost operation and Avery’s Branch Farms in Amelia, where the Alexander family tend a herd of dairy cows and raise grass-fed beef and poultry, in addition to pastured layers and pork. $40 members, $45 non-members – Lunch is included. 

Option 2: Hydroponics, and Vegetable Production (High Tunnel and Over-wintering) – Windmill Produce Farm’s two greenhouses growing hydroponic lettuces, herbs, and microgreens, followed by Twin Oaks Community‘s 3.5 acre vegetable operation, which provides most food for 100 people year round through the use of their two greenhouses. $40 members, $45 non-members –  Lunch is included. 

Register here