soil
-
Grower Success II: Cover Crop
After going through last year’s photos again I realized one of our most solid crop installations was actually our cover crop. We put more forethought and action into prepping the site than we did our nearly-failed onion crop, which really goes to show what you can accomplish if you prepare and what chaos you will Continue reading
-
Grower Success
What does it look like when everything goes well? Last week I detailed everything that went wrong with our onions. When you run into problems like that, it’s almost comical how many Grower Errors can stack on top of each other, compounding all the issues. On the other side of the coin, the side all Continue reading
-
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
-
Making Better Compost
For years, I just made lazy compost. I put stuff in a pile, sometimes it would heat up, sometimes it wouldn’t. And after years, I still have yet to harvest any reasonable amount of compost. The piles go bad, I abandon them, and they end up as waste I have to deal with in the Continue reading
-
Our First Cover Crop: Fall Treatment
In the last update the cover crop was alive and looking really pretty (previous posts are here). A lot has happened since then! We have finalized our treatment strategy and we’ve now completed it, so that’s what this post is about. A late rain helped the cover crop go strong into September, and the thick Continue reading
-
Consolidating Space, Building New Strategies
After each season over the past few years I reach the same conclusion: that the farm area is too large and we need to be more efficient with our space usage. Why manage a 20 acre area when you could manage 10? When a new season starts fresh this conclusion seems to be forgotten. Maybe Continue reading
-
Science Will Win
Back in January I wrote a piece detailing the absurd reliance and insistence on widespread chemical usage in agriculture. There is something I would like to draw attention to: a stunning collaborative journalism piece titled “Revealed: the US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics“ exposing the lengths to which the chemical industry will go Continue reading
-
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
-
Compost Squash Insights into Soil Function
The reason I love watching things grow in compost piles is that it’s a very visual and clear example of how plants respond to high microbial activity and organic matter. There’s an overflow compost here, a sort of secondary pile where anything extra I can’t process through a worm bin first ends up. It’s a Continue reading
-
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
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 