Data and Observations
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Exciting Cover Crop Results, Second Attempt
I had a pretty exciting week with this project, so lots of pictures today. Suddenly it was time to do a big job: deal with the first set of cover crops we planted. I went from feeling a bit down from reaching the “apex” of the season to being over the moon at the success 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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Lettuce in November
This season I planned an 8th crop of lettuce, anticipating having built our greenhouse already. When it became clear we were not going to be able to build the greenhouse until fall time, I decided to go ahead with the crop anyway, and plant as if. My thinking at the time was to see how Continue reading
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Our First Cover Crop: 60-Day Update
It’s now been two months since we installed our first cover crop and the sunflowers started blooming. What a pretty sight! The previous posts are here if you want to recap. It has grown in quite thick and there’s lots of things going on in the understory, the sorghum is easily over a meter tall Continue reading
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Our First Cover Crop: Update
It’s been about 5 weeks since we seeded our first cover crop. The initial post is here, if you want to review our installation. We got the rain overnight following the seeding, and the cover crop germinated. Here’s a before/after: It’s pretty exciting to go through this process for the first time and have such Continue reading
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Under The Canopy
This week I was able to get away from farming for two days and went camping in Nopiming Provincial Park. The heat had finally arrived and after going non-stop since the end of April, with the cool season we’ve had the heat hit hard and fast. There’s no point to getting heat exhaustion this early Continue reading
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Soil Temperature Measurements I
It occurred to me that I had never taken a soil temperature reading, so I’m going to start and see what we find. We use these row covers quite extensively, but I’ve never measured just how much they increase the temperature – and specifically soil temperature – underneath. We have also never applied mulch in 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.
Complimentary Blueberry Juice 