Ecology
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 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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Learn By Doing III
I’ve got a triple-whammy Learn By Doing post to make up for the slacking of regular Wednesday updates lately. The summer groove is settling in and pulling long hours in the field isn’t necessary anymore. Plus there’s a good three weeks of solid post ideas coming up and I promise I won’t miss on the 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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Hot, Dry: Decision Making On The Fly
Well that was quite the couple weeks there, hitting 35C and 30C+ on multiple occasions. We’ve had, in total, approximately 25mm rain since the beginning of May, which isn’t much. And for us, 90% of what we grow is not under irrigation (or what is known as “dry farming”). So here’s an update on all 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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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.
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