agriculture
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Journal Your Garden
For four years (going on five) I have been intensely journalling all the things on the farm. This is invaluable to all farmers, but also to hobby gardeners, backyard gardeners or plant nerds in general. It is useful for many reasons…but most useful is that in my pocket field journal, it is full of emotional Continue reading
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To the Greenhouse!
Spring equinox happened earlier today, March 20th (because it is a leap year). It was sunny and a beautiful day to be in the greenhouse, hitting 29C. Vitamin D feels good on the skin after the winter, and the greenhouse air fills the lungs with the vibrancy of spring. (Rate my office!) Spring equinox is Continue reading
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Seeds
One aspect of plants is above and beyond, even magical: the seed. The seed is promise, potential, hope and patience, all engineered into a tiny package able to withstand adverse conditions and wait them all out for the chance to start new life. Seeds come pre-packaged with everything the embryo requires to begin: protection, energy Continue reading
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Brilliant Green
One of the more fascinating parts of science and science history (at least to me) is that the true nature of something can be ascertained by asking the right questions. There are many many many examples of science (or society) rejecting a correct assertion dozens or hundreds of years before it is accepted. And since 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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52 Blueberries!
I set up this website with a simple goal: to write and publish one thing per week farming-related for one year. The first few months weren’t the easiest…often I scrambled to find something to write about, or felt like I wrote poorly. But I kept telling myself it was part of a process and that Continue reading
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All That Plants Know
Let’s consider all the things a plant knows how to do. A seed knows when to germinate…if the conditions are right, if it is too dry, too wet, too hot, too cold. A seed knows if it is close enough to the surface of the soil, or if it is too deep. Some seeds even Continue reading
agriculture, botany, chlorophyll, climate change, earth, Ecology, evolution, food, garden, gardening, intelligence, life, nature, photosynthesis, plants, seeds, soil, solar, trees -
The Maddening Absurdity of Chemicals in Agriculture
Commodity and chemical-based agriculture has many profound effects and one of the most overlooked ones is evolution driven by mass-scale global chemical application. It is also one of the most Sisyphean: the solution is always more powerful chemicals. Recently Reuters reported that weeds are becoming resistant to multiple chemical herbicides. It is wild that the Continue reading
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Garden Futures: Designing With Nature
When I wrote last week’s post Art Can Show Us the Diversity We’ve Lost, I didn’t know that a couple days later I would be stumbling into the Garden Futures: Designing With Nature exhibit in Helsinki’s Designmuseo. The stated goals of the exhibition seemed to jar with my perspective as a farmer. It is not Continue reading
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Art Can Show Us the Diversity We’ve Lost
Anecdotally, everywhere one seems to look, humans appear to have an irresistible urge to clean things up, make everything tidy, neat and uniform. Anecdotes meet reality. This issue is supported by mountains of science and documentation: modern conventional corporate agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity loss for its preference of monocultures and deforestation, forestry 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 