soil
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Everything Covered
On a hike in Nopiming Provincial Park, the forest floor was covered in mosses and lichens. Likely because of this wet season we have been having, the forest floor ecosystem was lush and vibrant. Something that is really noticeable in a forest like this is how many layers there are and how nearly total the 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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Lots of Ground to Cover
This season will be our first year implementing and experimenting with the use of cover crops. We aren’t really sure what to expect or how they will work with our system, but there’s only one way to find out. The idea behind cover crops is simple enough: farmers go to great lengths to maintain empty Continue reading
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Minimum Crop Space
One of the challenges of implementing cover crops in a zero-till system for our farm is that we still need to grow a lot of produce and keep the farm running! We need to figure out exactly what absolutely needs to stay inside a zero-till system. The rest, at least for one season, we can Continue reading
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Looking At The Positives
Week two here of examining the Shortfalls Of Our Zero Till system, and maybe the first thing after admitting defeat should be to look at all the positives and see what lessons we can and should carry forward. This past 2023 season we saw a record amount of productivity out of the field…we were more Continue reading
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Shortfalls of Our Zero-Till
For a few years now we have, at the end of each season, applied a large amount of compost to our zero-till beds. Through the years we experimented with different sorts of combinations of leaves, mulch and broadforking, all in attempt to loosen up our hard clay. In general it worked. We accomplished our goals: Continue reading
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Leaf Mulch and the Water Cycle
This past week we planted 800 Peppers (bell and hot) into leaf mulch. Continue reading
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Mulch for Soil Protection
This season we have really doubled down for mulch, which all of our long-season crops will have. Our goal is to keep as much soil covered as possible for as long as possible. We want to have a soil rich in life, provide a food source for decomposers and keep everything from drying out. Additionally Continue reading
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What are we doing to our soil?
Humans have spent eons changing the landscape, clearing forests, draining wetlands, and ploughing grasslands to grow food. And we are still doing this, in sensitive and ever-disappearing ecosystems. With the advent of what I’m going to refer to as “chemical farming” (synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides) which began in the early 20th century, agriculture entered 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.
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