agriculture
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Soil Principles Are Soil Principles: Doing a 180 on Greenhouse Management
It’s been an amazing first year in the new greenhouse and while we’ve been blown away by what we’ve been able to achieve in our first season, it’s come to the time when we need to think about turning it all over for fall production. And it’s necessary to go through this process so that… Continue reading
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The Tomato Journey
There are few crops in my farming career that I’ve learned more from, and made as many mistakes with, as tomatoes. To put it simply, I never respected this crop, how beautiful it could be, and I didn’t understand the “tomato people.” I thought that a tomato is a tomato. Furthermore, I thought that staking… Continue reading
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Thistle Be Gone: Allowing Nature to Transform
There has been an opportunity for me to observe something quite extraordinary. The observational experiment began several years ago after an acre of arable land close to the farm was abandoned. The field was quickly covered in thistles…an entire acre of thistles. The rhizomes and billions of seeds billowed out from this festering situation ever… Continue reading
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Soil Science At The Farm
We’re going to break format here with the first-ever Thursday post. I was a bit exhausted after a 14-hour day yesterday which, frustratingly, ended in sprayer nozzles plugging up from a compost extract while trying to do a foliar nutrition trial as the sun was setting. But I still wanted to write about something exciting… Continue reading
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Cover Crop Update:
It’s hot, real hot, record-setting hot, and tinderbox conditions have fires popping up everywhere from inside the city to our provincial parks, while the wind blows uncovered topsoil around enough to reduce visibility. This would be a good time to have an update on our cover crop situation, whose soil is not blowing away. For… Continue reading
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Greenhouse Full + Crazy Weather
July temps in early May is a bit scary, so the weather has accelerated all of the goings-on at the farm and we’ve entered Ludicrous Speed mode. That might not be the greatest thing for our spinach and broccoli, but it has meant that we’ve fired everything into the new greenhouse and we are, finally,… Continue reading
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Greenhouse Rain Delay
Twice in a row we were thwarted by moisture trying to get the plastic up on the greenhouse. The tiniest bit of moisture on the ground would have made an absolute mess on the plastic, so we’ve had to punt for sunnier days. Cloudiness or rain can gum up the works sometimes. So the end… Continue reading
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Transplanting Patience
We finally have some photosynthesis going on in the greenhouse! It’s nice to see green while there is still snow outside. This year feels a bit boring so far to start, but that’s largely due to me continuously moving seeding dates up. Partly because of our improvements in germination. I used to give 7-10 days… Continue reading
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2 for 2: Overwintering Honeybees
Still in the first year of beekeeping here! It felt like a big test, to see if I could successfully overwinter the bees. On a nice day recently I went in for a check, removing the R10 and R20 insulation that was (hopefully) keeping the bees stable all winter. And right away we saw good… Continue reading
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Toxic By Default
We received notice from our RM of all the wonderful chemicals that may be applied during the season, a run-of-the-mill PSA. It proceeds to list 9 different herbicides and 4 pesticides. At the bottom of the PSA comes the kicker: if you don’t agree, you have to write a physical letter to the provincial government… Continue reading
About Graham
Graham is an ecologist-farmer from Canada working on educating about the wonders and beauty of the natural world, and how we can design biodiverse food production systems.
