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Book Recommendation: White Light
I highly recommend White Light: The Essential Element that Changed the World, a book about Phosphorous, by Jack Lohmann. Published just last year in 2025, the book details the Phosphorous cycle and its crucial role in life on Earth, its discovery as an agricultural fertilizer, and the severe environmental and political implications of mining it. It also has a super awesome book cover that I would gladly have as wall art (or at least the one I have did).
For Lohmann’s first book, he does an amazing job explaining stuff and taking the reader on the journey. Even as a reader who knows a lot about science topics in general, I found the narration here very good. For anyone who knows nothing of the topics, you’ll also find it easy to follow along, as Lohmann doesn’t drag things down into academia.
There’s also a lot of rather shocking stuff in here, politically speaking, that is very well placed. Anytime Florida is involved with agricultural disasters you’re in for a good eye-opening and jaw-dropping ride.
I certainly learned a lot from this well-researched and well-footnoted book, and I also like that there was an editorial choice of sorts not to bog the writing down with citations. The footnotes are simply listed in the back, which made for some good source mining.
The best quality of the book is that the author takes a more meta-level approach to it all, I mean to say the totality of the life cycles on the planet, the geology, the way phosphorous is woven into billions of years of evolution, and how it shapes things and makes or breaks things. I often feel like these realities are lost on us puny humans, especially in these times of never-ending information bombardment, growth at all costs, consuming the environment for our own silly and selfish short-term interests.
I hope Lohmann has some more science-type books in development, but in the meantime, this one is a banger.
Graham
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Pushing for Spring Production
New year, new season, new schedule. As I always like to say, this is the best time of year for farming…because nothing has gone wrong yet. It’s all the purity of the platonic farming season, where everything grows perfectly, everything goes to plan, harvests are abundant, and perhaps most importantly, there are no weeds.
I’m working on analyzing last year’s season and all the data and photographs of our best successes and worst disasters. That is my typical off-season work project. But for this upcoming season, there will be a new challenge: pushing the limits for what we can get early, by up to three weeks.
Historically we’ve been pretty bad at this part. We try for early stuff and then it doesn’t work out for any number of reasons. Wisdom is not in the accumulation of experience but in knowing when to deploy the lessons from said experiences. Done successfully this is what is known as the so-called “green thumb.”
So I made a calculated bet that I could go for it. Yes, I’ve frozen my spinach seedlings because I thought they could survive -2C with no cover. Yes, I’ve lost spring sown crops to weeds. Yes, I’ve stuck stuff out in the field and dry farmed, I suppose, expecting they could magically find themselves water. We tried many “early” varieties with eyebrow-raising-low days to maturity, only to find out that the end result vegetable was small and underwhelming.
Despite all these farmer fails (and many, many, many, many more) over the years we defaulted to playing it more…safe. And we had no driver for requiring ourselves to get stuff early. We placed our CSA program into the back half of June when we knew we would likely have enough product for everyone. So we also favoured varieties that we knew were solid, they would just take some more time. The strategies we put into place made sure by end of June, and early July, we were flush with stuff.
So no better place to begin challenging oneself than with the same CSA program. This year I put ourselves on the hook for a two-week-earlier experimental pilot program, without even having any real idea of what it would look like, or what we could offer.
Now begins the exciting part, experimentation. I’ll be honest, I get downright bored if I am not experimenting. I need it. Part of the privilege of running a farm is getting to do exactly that. Part of it to is the knowledge that all these trials, many will surely fail, and some will succeed, but most importantly, there will be many surprises. And I like to use experiments to leverage those surprising results for future plans. You always learn something. And if you’re not actively trying to get into the failure zone, you might still learn, but definitely not at a fast rate.
The challenge that will be enjoyable now is looking at every vegetable, and asking is there some way I can get this earlier. For sure. Of course there is. Is there some method I’ve just not bothered considering so I wrote off the possibility of getting this crop early? For sure. Of course. Have I just been lazy, and could have covered something or watered something and succeeded? Be honest. For sure. Of course.
With the finalization of the new hoop house and quite a bit of no-till infrastructure, there is a lot less for us to do up front on the farm in the springtime this season. These infrastructure projects sucked a lot of valuable time and energy out from other things. With these projects in the 95% finished zone, we have a lot more energy to devote to what we should be focused on in April and May: growing stuff. As much as we can. As early as we can.
So we begin the new journey of 2026.
Graham
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Looking For Your Suggestions and Comments!
I published the first complimentary blueberry juice on January 15 2023, so in a short while I’ll be starting the 4th year of this writing experiment. I do enjoy doing this, just having a space to engage in the process of writing and offload whichever problems I’m working through, or compiling some photos. I don’t plan my posts and just try and make a point to publish every Wednesday.
But for this inaugural 2026 post I’d like to ask my readers for suggestions or comments. It could be a topic you’d like to see, or something you’d like to hear more about. It could be what you like about what I write here, or some question you have that you’d like me to answer. Leave a comment down below or feel free to email me.
Me beside the Pehr Kalm Elm Tree in Tukru, Finland, planted in approx 1750 as part of a botanical garden with over 300 specimens. The tree is potentially one of Turku’s oldest, as it survived the catastrophic Turku fire of 1827.
I’ve read a number of great books recently, I could write about those as well, and as I sit here about to tackle analyzing last season’s data and preparing this year’s schedule, there’s a lot of photos that I could pull and write about for probably a few months.
For a few years I’ve thought to make a YouTube channel, in the same sort of spirit as this website, just uploading stuff once a week, with no real plan in mind. Surely I don’t intend to go all “content creator” and “influencer” but rather just share what is happening in the garden and the things that interest me. I don’t know that I really want to do this, but it does cross my mind from time to time.
Lastly on the more philosophical, winter is a time for reflection, and there’s a lot to be said about mindset when it comes to farming or gardening, how these ideas can impact positively or negatively, how they affect a business, and finding the right ideas and philosophies that work for you in pursuit of this challenging work. These are interwoven with the philosophies and ideas of life itself, the human-centric viewpoint on plants, what role the farmer or gardener has in relation to all of it, and the decisions we make while we interact with the living things that surround us.
I hope we all have a great 2026!
Graham
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Beautiful Rhizosheaths
After quadrupling our cover crop area this year and changing a few operating procedures, it was super exciting to leave those cover crops digesting in the last weeks of fall (more on the cover crops and treatment this season here).
However the cover crop story for this season didn’t stop there. Yes they were shredded and incorporated with compost extract, calcium and a biological stimulant. But the weather remained mild through September and October, and wouldn’t you know, at least some species of the cover crop….started growing back.
This was super wonderful as it meant those fields were still actively cycling nutrients, and there was still some small amount photosynthetic energy being directed into the ground. It also meant that we maintained a good ground cover.
I don’t know why I didn’t get a better photo of this, at least till we got the first snow of the season in early November. That’s the re-growing cover under the white stuff.
So it would seem we got the best of both worlds here. We got what was intended: a micriobiolgy-driven decomposition in the top layer of soil following incorporation, breaking down that nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium and etc and holding it in the soil.
The bonus was that we also had some low amount of photosynthesis still happening, living plants putting some amount of carbon into the soil, and hopefully developing symbiotic relationships with the aforementioned microbiology.
Well, I did get photo evidence of that on October 25th on what I think is an Italian Rye.
This is a rhizosheath.
A rhizosheath is a zone of microbial activity around the plant…what appears to be dirt clinging to the roots here, which cannot be shaken off, is conglomerations of soil and microorganisms growing on the fine root hairs of the plant, which are secreting carbon-based goodies into the ground in what is known as “mucilage.” In this way, the plant can cultivate an interface with the life of the soil directly surrounding the roots.
I wasn’t expecting to find this when I yanked it up, but there it was. A healthy plant doing healthy plant things, right under my feet.
To be clear, I have pulled many a weed and many a plant over the years that do not have this feature. It was exciting to see.
I’d like to think that it was the cover crop process and biological amendments that lead me to this point, but the real proof will be next spring when we plant here. This was the goal: to create a biologically rich soil for next year’s crops to plug into and receive the benefits from.
Cool stuff.
Graham
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All The Life In The Compost Bin
Last year I was able to successfully harvest 600L of worm compost and repeat that this season. It worked pretty well, and if you want to read about why we’re running our waste ProMix through a worm bin you can read that post here, and on the second go-round I tried to make some improvements with what was added to the bin, and had some surprises along the way (…snails?!)
The main protagonist here is worms, which are the only intentional organisms in the bin, but the goal with the worm bin is to foster as much life as possible in the decomposition process. That should give us the widest possible array of life, and result in the widest possible array of both macro and trace elements in a biological form ready for uptake and integration by our seedlings via the invaluable decomposition process.
To accomplish this, I take it upon myself to add random extra stuff as habitat, using the “if you build it they will come” strategy. In an ecological framework, there are unknowable amounts of life happening to break things down, and recycle organic material. This means that strategically, we can add different groupings of things to the bin to target general groups of decomposers.
Some examples here are:
1. Leaves: which act as carbon-rich bedding substrate for the worms and are chock full of all sorts of trace elements wise old trees procure with their extensive symbiotic relationships. Leaves last a fairly long time in the bin and attract various molds.
2. Sticks/Branches: Being made of cellulose and lignin, these complex carbon-based polymers give wood their strength and as such take a long time to decay. They can provide a house for various fungi that slowly release this carbon into our finished soil mix. They last years and years in the bin and also retain moisture, which means we can always maintain a good fungal population, and who knows what else is slowly eating that wood.
3. Vegetable waste. These are going to break down quickly as they are mostly made of water, and attract a range of bacterias, and need to be continuously added through the season.
Those are our invisible allies in this game, but the worm bin supports an enormous tree of life. There are all sorts of arthropods and insects scurrying about the bin, consuming things and cycling nutrients. The most visible of this macro group of decomposers in the bin are isopods, our friends the sow bugs. But there are tons more if you look closely, the substrate in the bin comes alive. These bugs secrete their own enzymes that break down plant material.
There is an interesting paper on the often-overlooked effects of invertebrate decomposers on plants and soil here.
Also in the bin is a predator class, spiders and centipedes. All these insects additionally molt their shells as they grow from instar to instar, chitin being another complex carbon polymer that gets broken down in the bin, and additionally they all harbour their own nutrient packages, full of stuff that gets further recycled when these insects themselves die.
It’s really satisfying to see the amount of life in the bin at this point, and that this rich substrate that is getting broken down over and over is of enormous benefit to our future greenhouse seedlings. So…mission accomplished.
And now for a bunch of photos on what this all looks like in practice, though maybe in the future I will be patient enough with my macro lens to capture all the tiny life.
First, the glamorous bin itself, 8 feet by two feet, situated between our two greenhouses where it stays out of direct sun and is easy to access. Now to get enough of this stuff out to fill the 600L overwintering bin, which will stay at about 5C for the winter.
Next was a big surprise…snails! I guess I threw some kale stems in there at some point (I don’t remember, I do a lot of this on a whim when odd materials become available). After all, who knows what decomposition benefits or habitats various materials will provide.
I noticed they were hollow inside when I picked them up. When I broke them apart, I expected to find sow bugs (I did) and had my mind blown. They were full of snails. How did they get there? What species are they? I have absolutely no clue. I don’t live in a place known for snails that do not live in water. All I know is they are eating away at that kale stem and turning it into good stuff. Their shells will also be full of calcium, which is also always my #1 priority nutrient.
Every kale stalk I broke apart had dozens of them. Fascinating!
This year, I didn’t do so great on my overwintering worm husbandry. I actually ended up purchasing worm reinforcements by midsummer. They overwintered well enough, but I didn’t do my job after that part.
Here’s the 600L bin filling up, but I didn’t pre-sift it this year, opting to leave more intact chunks of stuff in there as continued food sources. I’ll sift it next spring as I go.
So to further that end and keep it going, I layer-caked some lettuce and leaves into the 600L bin, hoping to have more worms and keep it more biologically active. I think I made about 5 layers throughout the process.
And then more leaves:
….and then more finished compost.
I don’t expect this all to break down over the winter, but it should be easy to sift out. Or…well, what do I know? Maybe it’ll all disappear by March. We’ll see what happens with this next spring.
Until then, we’ll let this process play out. Decomposition is a process that is fundamental to ecosystems around the world, and it needs time. There is no replacement or way to speed this process up. Biological process work as they work…and this one has been working for billions of years, taking organic material and reconfiguring it for new uses.
We can use that process as ecologically-minded or biologically-minded agriculturalists or horticulturalists to supplement our plant’s symbiotic relationships, health and immune system responses.
If you’re nerdy enough to have reached this point and you want more decomposition knowledge, and you don’t yet know about Whale Falls, there you go.
Graham
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The Way The Weather Goes
This short blog hiatus was unplanned. Fall was mentally difficult and I think I just checked out of agriculture a bit early this season. Even though there was a lot of positive things going on, the farm received over 120mm of rain in October, effectively shutting down our season.
The one thing we have (until now) always been able to get done is re-mulching our no-till beds. However this was not an easy task with 120mm of rain. It just is not worth it to make a big mess with the compact tractor, ruts and mud. In the end we did have a one-day window where we decided to go for it, and managed to get 13/58 beds re-mulched for the season (but even that made quite the mess).
With this one task left to do I was in a sort of obsessive loop, just thinking about getting this task done, waiting and waiting for the moment it would stop raining long enough to go and do it. But that moment didn’t come.
In the meantime other tasks were completed, but it was pretty anticlimactic. Finally the idea of finishing 58 beds, ready to go for next season, was within reach. It’s been several-years-journey to get here, and the prospect of starting 2026 on that foot was exciting and enticing.
Instead, we’ll have a new challenge for 2026: starting with 13 beds, and figuring out how to do the rest on the fly. Effectively this means we won’t be able to mulch the rest before early seeding and transplanting season begins. It’s not the worst thing, but it will force us to think differently about how we approach seeding and transplanting in April and May.
Other than that, the fall time was full of great stuff: the cover crops performed wonderfully right to hard frost, the hoop house produced lettuce right up to the end of November, we harvested 600L of worm compost, we are overwintering 3 beehives, and we are expanding the CSA program to include the shoulder seasons.
Most importantly, we continue to improve year after year, and even though we ended the 2025 season on a note I’d rather not have ended on, I’m 100% confident that 2026 will continue the trend of rapid and meaningful improvement on our ability to grow consistently high-quality produce, week in and week out.
Graham
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No-Till Soil Demo: Let Plants Do The Work
Wow, did I ever get a nice big surprise this week when shredding all the beds. Finally, winter is coming, so down goes all the above-ground plant mass. We take our compact tractor and flail mower and shred all the plants down to the surface.
This methodology allows all the below-ground plant mass to stay intact. We need to remember that what we see above ground (green plants) is only a representation of what is invisible to us: the structures plants create beneath our feet, the crevices and cracks that the roots make, the micro-biome of habitats for tiny organisms that together weave a functioning ecosystem, all built by the plant.
So this season we tried something new, which was moving our Eggplants and Peppers into the no-till system (to decrease the number of plants we have to take care of, to have the ability to irrigate, and to pay closer attention to plant nutritional needs). To do this we decided to use landscape fabric with holes punched in them at the proper spacing for the plants. Last fall we built the beds, put on a layer of compost, and for the full 2025 growing season, it had landscape fabric over it filled with plants. The primary reason for the landscape fabric was to decrease weeding time, the secondary reason was to cover the soil.
It’s worth noting that this was a double soil cover: first the compost mulch, and then landscape fabric: a cover on the soil cover. So I was excited to see what would happen with this.
Taking the landscape fabric off these beds after 4 months of growing was like farmer-biologist christmas. So…here’s a list of what we noticed:
1) The beds are remarkably intact. You can even see where our pathways are, and the compost mulch does not at all look like it has been through a full season. Protection from the elements really preserved the mulch. This is great as we won’t have to apply much compost in this section which will save both time and money.
2) You cannot brush away the surface of the compost mulch because it is fully colonized to the surface with roots. I have noticed this amazing phenomenon in multiple contexts but it was amazing to see it over 8(!) beds. If you cover the soil, plant roots will literally grow on the surface. I see this in my Apples (covered with wood chips), Radishes (a thick canopy will keep the surface cool and moist), Celery (same as Radishes), and Tomatoes (when applying straw as mulch for dry-farmed field Tomatoes).
I love this concept because it really visibly proves a lot of the foundational principles going on with respect to how plants modify their environment. It’s the farmer’s job, I think, to create the conditions that the plant can fully utilize as much of the resources surrounding the plant as possible. It’s an easy win to give the plant an extra 1-2 inches of operating space by covering your soil.
3) Then I dug a hole and I’ve just never experienced this level of awesomeness before.
In my hand is an 8″ deep sample (you can go 10″ +) of what plants are doing where we aren’t able to look.
You can see the roots fully occupying the space frost he surface down to where I’m holding it, and other than the top inch, that’s red river valley clay. The shovel sinks in with barely a push. You can feel the shovel cutting…not clay…but actually having to cut the root mass. These macro-aggregate structures crumble apart with a light touch.
I dug several samples at random through the 8 beds, and no matter where I stuck my shovel, this was the result every time.
4 ) I want to stress that the plants did this. Photosynthesis did this. Plants build the soil. Plants engineer the environment, so that other things can live there. Plants move things from a less complicated system to a more complicated one. It’s hard to remember we live on a planet governed by natural laws, when we are scrolling through garbage and AI slop on the internet every day. No matter what nonsense is going on social platforms right now, the facts remain about our existence: we are on a planet, orbiting a star, that happens to have an atmosphere and liquid water, and that happens to have an intelligent form of life that has been successful for over 2 billion years, and that form of life enables other life through the splitting of Carbon Dioxide into its component parts using photons from the star we orbit.
I just think that’s fucking amazing, and every time I step out onto the field, that’s what goes through my mind.
For winter, I will leave all these structures intact, and next year, this is where this section of beds will start. So, in this sort of system and methodology, you can build on your successes from one year to the next. There is no starting from zero. All those things that plants built, they are there for the next generation of plants.
Graham
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No-Till Bed System Fall Prep 2025 Version
Next year will be our 9th attempt at this…can we finally utilize the entire system? We’ve never maxed it out. (For a quick recap about where we were last season, and two seasons when we converted to 100 feet), and for this season, we had the capacity for a 58-bed system, but in practice we only used I think 52 or 53 (there were just some beds on the fringes that weren’t worth dealing with for this season).
Now that it’s time to clean everything up and put it to rest for winter, I realized at this point I have had enough experience that I could likely tailor the preparations for specific crops. The end result of this being that we wouldn’t need to move as much compost.
So some goals will be good. But before I get to goals I should list a few of the biggest improvements and observations from this season.
1. Moving Peppers, Eggplants, Onions and Tomatoes from the open field to the bed system. It’s been a goal for a few years now, but this year we did it, and the results were phenomenal. The biggest reason being we could water them regularly. Moreover, we realized we didn’t need so many pepper plants, tomato plants, or onions, that we could grow these things at a high level, and get big yields.
2. All of #1 can be put into one section on drip tape. We have yet to do it, but this means that we can build one single section-wide drip manifold and run it on 20 beds if we have to. Needing less plants means we can rotate within one section and be fine, and it means we can avoid watering tomato leaves and eggplant leaves and pepper leaves. It also means we can, in the future, hook up a fertigation system and be able to deliver nutrition through the summer to keep these plants pumping.
3. The Tomato Trellis. This was fantastic, post about it is here, but we had it in a section with overhead wobbler irrigation. This can be moved to the middle section.4. Not everything likes compost. Nope. Which also means we don’t have to spread as much, and this is the main point driving this fall season’s prep considerations.
* * * * * * *At this point I think I’ll have to do a few draft ideas of what next year’s field might look like, and move things around enough that I can get a broad-strokes idea of what needs to go where, leaving myself plenty of room to manoeuvre in the spring.
More importantly, I really want to be able to get my calcium and amendments down underneath the compost before winter. I want to be able to begin the season not having to worry about nutrition. So whatever doesn’t need it, or doesn’t need compost, needs to be considered.
It’s been a long journey with this “experimental field” and not only does it look like next season will be actually fully at capacity, but that it continues to evolve, and will continue to evolve, to meet the needs of our farm and our community. Removing crops from a dry-farming system to this biologically rich one has made all the difference in product availability and quality over the last few years.
I expect that as our knowledge of how to utilize this system, how to address nutritional issues on the fly, and having an arena in which to solve problems quickly (instead of hoping for rain) will lead to another jump in availability and quality.
Graham
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Problems With Parsnips
After trying for 4 years or so, I think I’m finally giving up on this one.
The general problem with the Parsnips is that they anchor themselves into our clay soil and are nearly impossible to dig. I’ve also noticed they send out enormous side shoots, which I thought anchored them even further. Luckily I was growing the open-pollinated Hollow Crown, and many were short and stumpy, the broad fork would pull up enough that I could say “I grew Parsnips successfully.”
But truthfully they took enormous amounts of time and frustration, broken broad fork handles and pitchforks. The Parsnips would break or be damaged by the fork.
Parsnips are very much unlike Carrots. With Carrots, there are fine root hairs that colonize all parts of the soil, breaking it apart and creating amazing aggregates that crumble when you fork them out. And more importantly the tools go under and below the carrot, lifting them up. With Parsnips, there are no such fine root hairs creating aggregates and the forks intersect with the main root, which anchors itself in as if the Parsnip is planning to stay forever.
Actually I think maybe the Parsnips do want to stay forever.
So for this year, I thought I would give it one more go, the main problems to address being: 1) making sure it was in a good fluffy well-developed bed, and 2) changing the variety to an F1, Albion.
The good news is that Albion is amazing and the Parsnips are absolutely perfect. They are a great size, consistent, uniform and most importantly for me, they do not have the side anchor roots like the Hollow Crown.
The bad news is we dug about 8 of them before we gave up, broke a broad fork, decided to escalate matters and get the under cutter on the compact tractor and….yes, the Parsnips stopped the tractor.
We did manage to pull one out and it measured a whopping 17″.
That’s 17″ down into Red River gumbo clay, these things are not going anywhere. It is easier to visualize how the forks bring up blocky, bricks of clay and the Parsnip doesn’t budge.
So I’ve got 300 feet of Parsnips anchored down like piles for a house, all ready to sprout up next year and go to seed. How I’m going to deal with that I haven’t decided yet…
…one more Hail Mary for this season, to hope it dries up a lot, and that the dry clay will be easier to fracture and extract the Parsnips.
Not holding my breath on that one and, for now, unless I can come up with a better idea of how to grow these, I’m going to have to take the L on Parsnips and move on. They’re an extremely tough crop in this area and I’m just not willing to spend a week digging them (only to break half of them in the process), which is obviously bad enough for economic reasons, but mostly to preserve my sanity.
If anyone has techniques for extracting these out of clay without a back hoe, let me know.
Graham
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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 of this cover crop.
Since this is our second year trialling cover crops, we made some adjustments, and seeing the results of those adjustments was what was so exciting. If you want to read more about our first cover crop installation from last season, I’ve included the links to those at the bottom of this post.
First, let’s admire how amazing this cover crop is.
This is incredible to me, because for most of the season I was a bit despondent that we might be able to install cover crops at all. We had drought and high temps through June and July, and getting into the beginning of August without rain, well, we need rain for the cover crop to germinate.
It was a struggle the whole way through. We thought rain might be coming, so we seeded the first two acres. Rain didn’t come, the fields sat there barren for ten days. Then we thought rain might be coming again, so we seeded another 2 acres. Then rain didn’t come. Despondency! It was almost the middle of August, how much could a cover crop really grow, if we were even able to germinate it?
The rain came, the cover crop germinated, followed by high temps and warm overnights. In four weeks, at the end of the season, despite decreasing light availability, the Sorghum and Sunflowers shot up to 3 or 4 feet high, and the peas trellised themselves, as they do.
Amazing.
So what did we change for this season?
First, we planted the same ten-way mix as we did last year:
Black Oil Sunflower
Sorghum Sudan
German Millet
Italian Rye Grass
Hairy Vetch
Forage Peas
Daikon Radish
Purple Top Turnip
Flax
Berseem Clover
Second, we decreased the seeding rate. Last year we were just figuring out how to use our new seeding implement we invested in just for this purpose. This year, we metered out maybe as much as half of the seed we did last year. This allowed the plants a lot more space to establish, and the resulting green biomass was lush and thick.
Third, we had extra alfalfa fertilizer that had Calcium and Sulphur included in it, and so we decided it was best to make sure all cover crops included this fertilizer. This way we can get our Ca and S in, and it can be cycled by the plants and microbiology in this season, which means we can have it all biologically available for our crops next season. It would also help keep our cover crop in a healthy state, instead of having all those plants fight for any available Ca and S.
Fourth, we got a recommendation from the Soil Extension that instead of taking action to shred and incorporate the field after it has died, to instead shred the cover crop while it is still green. The thinking here being twofold: one that the soil is still warm and the microbiology is still active instead of reaching dormancy so it still has time to work magic, two that green material from the cover crop would more readily break down, just as if you were adding greens to a compost pile, and likewise, if you are adding browns to a compost pile, you will be slowing it down.
Fifth: When applying compost extracts and amendments, I need to add or include a food source for the microbiology. So I got a product to try mixing into the tank for this year’s application.
That all made perfect sense to me, so we made all those changes and wow:
I had maybe one of the most enjoyable experiences of the whole summer shredding this cover crop down. It was a beautiful evening to begin with, but also there was an immediate feedback loop telling me this is absolutely the right way to go. The intuition was there.
The scent and sight of the shredded plant material spoke as much. It was very obvious that, if we were to now mix this into the top layer of the soil, we would be encouraging the breaking down of this material, instead of letting it oxidize and carbonize.
After a couple snafus with the sprayer, we got it up and going, and applying the compost extract, soy hydrolysate, and additional Calcium was next. We also opted instead of “spraying” to remove the nozzles entirely and just let it dump out, at a rate of about 350L/acre. I tried to get a photo but it was hard, this was the best I could do.
The only last thing was to mix it all in, and you can see in this next photo just how fast things change. The morning after the cover crop was shredded, it was already losing that green vibrancy. Just as if you cut a lawn, that “fresh cut lawn” state does not last for very long, and by the next day, the grass clippings will be oxidizing…within 48 hours, it will turn brown. So these steps to shred and incorporate cover crops as one single action is an important time-sensitive consideration.
It feels really, really good to be taking these positive steps to improving our soil health, not letting land lie fallow, and allowing plants to do what they are evolved to do. Plants are ecosystem engineers that harness the power of the sun to split Carbon from Oxygen, in order to build their structures, and to foment symbiotic relationships with underground micro-organisms that collect more building materials for the plants. These building materials will be broken down again by more micro-organisms, and if we get all the timing right, it means we can really boost our farm’s overall health, our planning, and shrink the footprint of the farm. I am very happy we were able to quadruple our # of acres under cover crop this season.
Living ecological systems are intelligent, and we as humans need to realize this fact not just for our agriculture, but to protect the intelligent systems that stabilize our planet’s climate.
Graham
thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juiceOur First Cover Crop Installation (June 26, 2024)
First Cover Crop Update (August 7, 2024)
60-Day Update (Sept 11, 2024)
Fall Treatment (October 30, 2024)
Spring Update (May 14, 2025)
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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.
