Tiny Farm Forum: Forum: How-to in the field

Tiny Farm Forum: Forum: How-to in the field - Recent Posts http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Tiny Farm Forum: Forum: How-to in the field - Recent Posts en Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:19:07 +0000 sambegirl on "VH1's 2010 DoSomething Awards" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/vh1s-2010-dosomething-awards-2#post-2238 Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:16:09 +0000 sambegirl 2238@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ I agree that fresh farming is especially important, and people everywhere need to do support local farming! I’m helping spread the word about VH1’s Do Something Award: City Division. Five cities have been nominated to win the award for their great contributions in fields like education, volunteering, and going green. Portland, OR has been nominated for their fresh farming efforts, and if they get the most votes, they could win! If you want to vote for Portland, you can visit <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/events/do_something_awards/2010/city/?xrs=synd_forumsL" rel="nofollow">http://www.vh1.com/shows/events/do_something_awards/2010/city/?xrs=synd_forumsL</a>! Let’s start the revolution today! Steve on "Round wooden water barrel" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/round-wooden-water-barrel#post-388 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:21:52 +0000 Steve 388@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Hmm this is a pretty open question. If I was going to build one I would cut a base out of marine plywood, and do a simple frame and then side it with either 1x4's or barn wood and line it with heavy duty pond liner plastic. The size and shape are completely up to you, however my biggest concern would be to have a sturdy enough frame to hold all of the water. If you do use a plastic liner beware of complications if you need to keep the water from freezing by utilizing an in trough heater. Good luck! Hillside Farm on "Non-bitter lettuce" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/non-bitter-lettuce#post-378 Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:20:22 +0000 Hillside Farm 378@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ During the summer we plant romaine, red leaved varieties and butter crunch types so they aren't as bitter and don't bolt as fast. During the winter we plant the Manoa types of which the Anuenue is one. We get most of our seed from the University of Hawaii. They have a website <a href="http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/seed/">http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/seed/</a> where you can buy seeds from them. The Anuenue lettuce variety does better in cool seasons, I think. That's when we generally plant it anyway. lucasm1 on "Round wooden water barrel" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/round-wooden-water-barrel#post-371 Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:07:22 +0000 lucasm1 371@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Where can I get plans to build a round wooden water barrel to water the livestock? Matthias on "Ways to use alfalfa pellet fertilizer" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/how-to-use-alfalfa-pellet-fertilizer#post-344 Fri, 22 May 2009 07:25:47 +0000 Matthias 344@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Hi Mike and Tiny farm people, We've used alfalfa for a few years now at the rate of 1 ton per acre. On the long gardens(the ones were going to plant all at once) we spread it with the manure spreader and till it in. <a href="http://borealedgefarm.blogspot.com/2009/05/spreading-compost.html">Here's a movie of what it looks like in the spreader</a>. There's a bunch of goodies in there, get your recipe cards! Boreal Edge Farm Amendment Mix (per 330 foot row, 6 feet wide) 4 loader buckets well rotted cattle manure 2 50 pound bags organic Alfalfa pellets 3 pounds kelp meal 10 pounds pure wood ash Once the field is covered, we rototill it in. I have never tried topdressing the pellets, mostly because the deer are attracted to the smell. However, last year we tried using only alfalfa on our potatoes, to see if it would help control scab. I can't say it made things any better in the scab department(because we didn't have a control row) but it did serve as an excellent all round fertilizer on its own, and the potatoes were happy with it. Because its a slow release of both nitrogen and potassium (not much phosphorus)high organic matter content (42%) host of trace nutrients and ph of 6.5, alfalfa pellets work quadruple duty on our farm. Raising the low ph or our boreal soils, while feeding the crops and increasing the biological activity in the earth, increasing fertility overall. The pellets do break down over time, but they can still be found (if incorporated in the soil) even a year later. This spring when we pulled some plastic mulch we found all kinds of totally undisturbed pellets in the bed. Also some spilt pellets lasted all fall/winter/spring on a rock pile at the edge of the field. completely exposed to the elements. We also use the pellets when we go to incorporate a cover crop, just broad casting a few hundred pounds over the area to be tilled after the cover crop has been mulched down with the riding mower. This really speeds decomposition of the carbon in the cover crop up, which is super important with our very short window of soil life activity here (3 months) The last location on the farm we've found them useful is in the compost pile, for the same reason as the cover crop, to help break down the carbon in the "compostibles". It also helps the bacteria in the pile to thrive, and jump starts them in the spring. Whew! Hope this helps, Matthias, Mike (tfb) on "Ways to use alfalfa pellet fertilizer" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/how-to-use-alfalfa-pellet-fertilizer#post-335 Tue, 12 May 2009 14:51:58 +0000 Mike (tfb) 335@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ So we purchased 1 ton (2,200 lbs, in this case) of dehydrated alfalfa pellets from the <a href="http://www.wamcoltd.ca/">Western Alberta Milling Co.</a> It's certified organic, sounds like a cool alternative fertilizer, and has been delivered. The general instructions from WAMCO are for a ton per acre per year for veggies, applied in spring, and again at a couple of points during the season. Top dressing (spreading on the surface) was recommended, allowing a week for incorporation after, ideally, rain, or irrigation, has rehydrated it. I'm researching around and will have more questions for them as well. We haven't started using it yet, the purpose here is more as a garden start-up supplement than a full-on fertilizer for annual use. (In another forum topic here, I explained <a href="http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-278">why we got alfalfa pellets this year, and our overall tiny farming fertility situation</a>.) I originally heard about alfalfa pellets right here, in a <a href="http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-280">comment by Matthias</a>. I'll contact him to see if he'll add experience and tips to this topic (unless he reads this first!). Meanwhile, if anyone else has used alfalfa pellets for veggie production, any input would be great! We'll post our progress on this end as the season goes by. EtienneG on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-322 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:27:55 +0000 EtienneG 322@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Mike, I believe you enjoy ample space at your new farm. Have you considered growing your own alfafa? According to my study (I am taking "Organic field culture" by correspondence at Université Laval this semester), alfafa is the best nitrogen-fixing legume and produce as much organic matter as a prairie. And it is perennial too, so it should not take up too much work to maintain. You could, for example, split your field in six plots and do a rotation where vegetable are grown on a plot for three consecutive years, followed by three years of alfalfa. That way, you have half your field in green manure without expanding too much energy, as you only have to plow/till one sixth of your field yearly. And you could actually harvest some of the alfalfa during the summer to use as top-dressed fertilizing mulch on vegetable. According to my brother (a conventional farmer), the downside of growing perennial alfalfa is that it is very hard to plow under. The roots can get as big as your pinky, and it take some serious power from the machinery to kill it. Mike (tfb) on "Onion seedlings: yellowing and 12 hour lights" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/onion-seedlings-yellowing-and-12-hour-lights#post-311 Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:04:35 +0000 Mike (tfb) 311@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Last season, starting onion from seed for the first time, I ran into the same info about too much artificial light, warning about premature bulbing and marble-sized onions after a whole season's growth. But this was from just online one source. My onion seedlings had already been under 15-hours of fluorescent a day for 3-4 weeks. I was concerned, but it was only one source... Still, I immediately reduced the light to 13 hours and did some more research. And those onions sized up fine. Here's what I found (all basic veggie info): Onions are particularly sensitive to day length (photoperiodism) for triggering bulbing. Onions are considered either short-day (bulb at around 12 hours of sun) and long-day (bulb aorund 15 hours). Farther from the equator, we have to grow long-day varieties, short-day ones wouldn't get a chance to grow; closer to the equator, long-days would never bulb. AND, onions are apparently capable of starting to bulb at just about any point, even as tiny seedlings. What I didn't really find: It's not clear how important light intensity is, and the temperature-light combination that triggers bulbing. The light-temperature thing comes up a lot with plants, one can dramatically modify the effects of the other. Indoors, the light is weak compared to the sun, and the day-night temp variation is minimal compared to in the field. This stuff may or may not be formally known. So much practical application stuff turns out to be only an educated guess when it comes to the "known" science, when you look into it. I asked on a couple of forums, and got a couple of, "No way that's an issue, I've been doing 14-15 hours for years and no problem." I also talked to my main seed house. They only knew the general day-length stuff, and haven't heard about this as a problem from customers, and I imagine they would've if it happened. (They start onions under 24-hour light, but move them to a naturally lit greenhouse as soon as they emerge.) So, less light may be safer, but with weak fluorescents, it also gives the onions less overall light. Onion seedlings really want light, in my experience (last year :), they start wilting out of direct light in a couple of days. So maybe that extra three hours of light is something they could really use, and because it's so weak, they're not in danger of bulbing. It sounds kinda unnatural, but so is keeping all the other seedlings under for 15 hours. Anyhow, this year, my from-seed onions have been under mostly for the 15 hours. I'm still planting sets as well, so there's a back-up! And we shall more or less definitively see, for at least my couple of varieties, by mid-summer! If the orange-yellow thing is just the snipped tips, like, under a millimeter, that's just them drying out where they were cut. It's not a problem. Bob on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-289 Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:21:25 +0000 Bob 289@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ We've been using a combination of cover crops (oats or buckwheat) but mostly we have been relying on a good supply of composted cow manure. Our plan this spring is to frost seed some of the beds we don't need immediately with red clover, and then till them down once we need to succession seed in our sunflowers (which will hopefully be able to use the fixed nitrogen). I'll post how successful we are later this growing season. I'm not sure how it will go, and I don't think I could ever completely get away from using composted manure. We started out a small flock of sheep and herd of goats 2 years ago just so we wouldn't need to buy manure from the neighbour anymore, but man you need a lot of animals to produce the kind of manure we were using. I might just buy 5 loads again. He only charges $30 for a full manure spreader (dual axle). I usually flip it about 3 times over the year and it turns into black gold. Mike (tfb) on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-287 Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:12:13 +0000 Mike (tfb) 287@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Thanks, Matthias. I've heard about pelleted alfalfa, but of course, I've never had to look into importing soil amendments before! I just spoke with Danielle at <a href="http://www.wamcoltd.ca/">Western Alfalfa Milling Co. Ltd.</a> It was interesting. Points that stood out for me: <ul> <li>cost: about $450CDN/tonne (2,200lbs) before shipping, and by their recommendation, that's good for 1 acre of veggies for one season</li> <li>application: Their suggestion for veggie production is an initial 1/2 ton in spring, and a 1/4 ton every couple of months (June and August), all top-dressed</li> <li>nitrogen: Most interesting, the alfalfa pellets have a relatively low nitrogen content, but it's apparently still all the N the plants need</li> </ul> The whole idea of shipping in fertility is (obviously) not something I want to do on an ongoing basis. I still have everything to learn about green manure and extremely low animal manure veggie farming. BUT, from what I've learned so far, especially from observation, I think green manuring, probably with a small amount of animal manure, is doable without jumping through hoops. Matthias on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-280 Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:32:45 +0000 Matthias 280@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ We also face a manure shortage on our farm, and have taken to growing green manures to improve the fertility of the soil. It may be possible to one day provide for all the fertility needed though only green manures, but after a few years of experimenting, I realized it would only work for us if we had an extremely long rotation. To explain: The fibre/carbon in any plant matter turned into the ground requires nitrogen in order to break down. Until the carboniferous material in the plowed in cover crop is largely decomposed the nitrogen availible for plants is severely reduced. In my early experiments even a crop of succulent green clover(itself legumous and therefore a nitrogen fixing plant)had enough carbonifeous material (stem, roots, leaves) that it required 4 weeks of decompostion before the plant matter was broken down and the nitrogen was availible for the crop. Counting the time it took to seed and grow the cover crop of clover and then the decompostion time, it was an entire season. The amount of biomass and nitrogen returned to the soil improved the fertility, but my rough estimate was 4 or 5 years in cover crops would be required to balance out the nutrients uptaken from cash crop. This meant that my 2 acre garden would actually need to be 10 acres in total, three quarters of it in cover crop. More carbony things like dry oats took longer to break down, using more nitrogen and returned only biomass to the soil, not nitrogen (however a good stand of oats seems to have an alleleopathic effect on crab grass). After 5 years of oats/clover cover crop rotation and using small quantities of manure applied at the root zone of a given crop, the overall fertility of the gardens had increased, but was still low. I decided that i needed an alternative to legumes for providing nitrogen, so that I could grow a large amount of biomass in the form of oats or buckwheat or rye and get it decomposing more quickly. After some searching and talking to other farmers i discovered Alfalfa meal. Alfalfa meal(or pellets) are made from dried, ground up alfalfa plants. The plants themselves are nitrogenous, not just the root nodule as it the case in clover and beans. They make an excellent organic soil amendment for many reasons but I'll let you take a look online <a href="http://www.wamcoltd.ca//index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=16&Itemid=124">, there is a lot of other material out there about them too. Using this amendment we can now grow and incorporate a green manure crop without it locking up the nitrogen in subsequent cash crops.</a> Mike (tfb) on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-278 Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:16:08 +0000 Mike (tfb) 278@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ This will be my first year of relying on green manure and mainly plant-based compost. For the past six seasons of tiny farming, I've had the convenience (blessing!) of an abundant supply of well-aged, on-farm cow manure, so I really didn't HAVE TO concern myself with green manuring for fertility/organic matter. I did experiment with undersown (white) clover, also buckwheat, oats and fall rye as green manure cover crops, but on a small scale. Now, on new land, I don't have on-farm manure. We plan to get a couple of dozen chickens and maybe a few goats, and they'll produce nowhere near enough manure for a couple of acres of garden, in the style to which I was accustomed! For this first season, we're going to purchase several tons of certified organic cow and sheep manure from a local, commercial soil company, and also some cow manure direct from a certified organic farm down the road. This will cost around $1,000 give or take, and there's no way around it I can think of in order to be up and running this spring (the new garden is on a former hay field grown out to mainly grass). I don't want to rely on outside inputs after that. So I'm studying up! What jumped out at me on my partial diagonal read of the Pieters book (which I'll read at least chapters of fully) was this fine paragraph: In Ts'i Min Yao Shu of Chia Szu Hsieh who lived about the fifth century B.C., there is a passage which reads: "For manuring the field, lu tou, (Phaseolus mungo, L. var. radiatus, Bak.) is best, and siao tou, (P. mungo, L. var.) and sesame rank second. They are broadcast in the fifth or sixth month, and plowed under in the seventh or eighth month. . . . Their fertilizing value is as good as silkworm excrement and well-rotted farm manure." This is exactly what we now call green manuring. So straightforward and uncomplicated! A couple thousand years later, and I hope to get to the same point: a simple system!! I can definitely see the argument that domesticated animals are a necessary part of sustainable agriculture, to supply various types of labor, as food, and for nutrient processing and recycling. On the other hand, given my situation, I have to like the strictly green manure approach as well. :) I'll post whatever I discover, here and on Tiny Farm Blog! kaatvds on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-275 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:25:26 +0000 kaatvds 275@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Okay, having read both <a href="http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010160.Pieters.pdf">the Pieters book</a> (diagonally) and <a href="http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/growing_green:paperback">Growing Green</a> (in depth), I can definitely recommend Growing Green! James on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-274 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:55:56 +0000 James 274@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ Over the years I have been drawn to and moved away from green manure as a means of maintaining soil fertility and structure. I used to be an avid weeder and rototiller: preparing growing beds, growing a crop and following with a seeding of green manure (beans, peas, radish, rye, clover etc. depending on the season). Growing the green manure was almost as much work as growing the crop. Soil prep, seeding, watering and tilling under. Meanwhile a nearby bed that I didn't have time to attend to is growing a thick and healthy crop of "weeds". Lots of deep rooting clover and dandelion and ample plantain, ragweed, lambsquarter, chickweed and creeping charley. As a green manure it still has to be finally tilled into the soil but rather than fighting the weeds my present strategy is to barely keep them under control, letting them work as a protective soil cover under and around my vegetable crops. Once those are harvested I let the weed plants grow up and reseed before I cut them down, usually in late fall so that they are a good ground cover over winter and are softer and partly decayed when it's time to cultivate in the spring. I would like to further reduce the amount of tilling and soil turning that I do both for the benefit of the earthworms and other soil dwellers and because repeated tilling does significantly reduce the carbon and humus capacity of the soil. My learning project for this coming summer is to work with a smothering mulch somewhat but not quite as Ruth Stout advocated. I am planning on preparing couple of new growing beds (each around 24' x 150') by mowing down the orchard grass, clover and "weed" mix that is growing there and further covering this area with a thick layer of similar material cut and carried in from nearby pastures. I'll cover this with a synthetic greenhouse ground cover material (black, heat collecting, air and water permeable) and water frequently, on rainy days, with manure tea to encourage a rich and active decomposition over the course of the summer and fall. My hope is that, come spring 2010, these beds will be ready, once the ground cloth is removed for use on other beds, for planting without too much further preparation. I imagine that once the crop is planted, grown and harvested I will repeat the process with more mulch and patient decay. This way of preparing growing areas will certainly not be any less work than what I am doing now but I'm sure the outcome will be superior. The soil will be much richer in organic matter and micro-fauna and moisture holding capacity will be greater. I have always been uncomfortable with rototilling but have previously been unable to see my way around it. Every pass of the tiller exposes so much of the precious soil carbon to the degrading effects of air and sun, You can almost see it disappearing and blowing away as carbon dioxide. And all the soil creatures getting churned up and thrown around. I don't like it. I feel that the mulch will be creating a nurturing environment and I can't see any harm in that. Sure I will still be importing material rather than growing it in place but in my case this mulch is coming from a few dozen yards away which is less energy consuming than a green manure seed farm located who knows where. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out. By the way, my tinier farm is located in southern Quebec, not far from Montreal. Zone 5-b according to Agriculture Canada Maps, heavy clay loam. Our growing season starts late April and planting can continue into early to mid September with something to harvest into early November most years. Good luck to all, James kaatvds on "Green Manuring" http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/topic/green-manuring#post-272 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:40:06 +0000 kaatvds 272@http://tinyfarmblog.com/forum/ I'm reading *Growing Green. Animal-Free Organic Techniques* by Jenny Hall and Iain Tolhurst. It's a UK edition but in the States it's published by Chelsea Green. It's less technical perhaps than the Pieters book (great link, thanks!) but it's still presented as a handbook of sorts. Perhaps worth a read? We just bought a small patch of land here (.7 acres), but half of it (1/4 acre?) was torn apart by septic system installation. It's nothing but subsoil, stones and weeds. And stones. It's hard pan in the summer, a swamp any other time. And there are stones, big ones and small ones. There's also some slope involved, where the erosion is something fearsome. We're going to grow a cover crop there that can stand partial shade and doesn't have deep roots (they would clog the septic's pipes): that would be buckwheat, I think. We haven't decided on what to grow in winter yet, or in early Spring if we can get to it by then... I'm fascinated by green manure. There's nothing like it for enriching the soil, keeping it where it is, and closing those loops.