Garlic is an example of how crop rotation can only go so far. There are some pretty nasty soil borne garlic diseases and nematodes. They can decimate your field and ruin your crop. YES, crop rotation is a tool to clean those fields up. In the worst cases it can take as long as 10 … More Garlic Is Where Your Crop Rotation Can Break Down
We’re getting to the end of Crop Rotation month at the Farmer Spreadsheet Academy, but we have time for one more spreadsheet tip that ties everything together. Here’s some fancy filter footwork to sort your crop plan by family, light/heavy feeder, and by plant date. This will help you group crops so you can define … More FSA Tip #42 Turn Your Crop Plan Into A Crop Rotation
My favourite rotation is HLC 1 year Heavy Feeder 1 year Light Feeder 1 year Cover Crop Generally speaking, heavy feeders include brassicas, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucurbits, corn, and alliums. Light feeders include carrots, beets, beans, peas, lettuce, and most herbs. 🌱 🌱 🌱 🌱 🌱 🌱 In the HLC rotation: You spread compost/manure then … More My Favourite Crop Rotation
As patient as a bean in a bin. These are the beans that have not yet been picked. These are the beans that are left once the seed crew went through and hand picked out all the bad beans – the splits, the moldies, the germinated, the stones that are not beans, the occasional pea … More As Patient As A Bean In A Bin
The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman There was a time (before kids, before a bustling seed company, before all the spreadsheets) that I’d start every winter by reading this book. Eliot Coleman presented everything in a series of cycles and systems that flowed into each other and supported each other. And it was done … More Farmer Book Club: The New Organic Grower
There are a lot of ways that lettuce can turn into jelly. A long list of fuzzy moldy slimy diseases. And they can strike seemingly overnight. One morning you have a bed of tall romaine lettuce looking perfect for harvest. And the next day … not so perfect 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 🥬 I’m going … More Keeping Your Lettuce From Turning Into Jelly
It is so much easier to think about a farm that has been defined. And one of my starting places is how to break up your field into modular blocks. Here’s a short guide to show you why and how to do this. It has some examples of how we’ve defined field blocks @fermetournesol. And … More FSA Tip #41 Design Your Fields With Modular Blocks
Here’s the Farmer Book of Nightmares. Also published as Diseases and Pests of Vegetable Crops in Canada by The Canadian Phytopathological Society. 500+ pages of suspense and vegetable gore. This book is broken down by a series of crops/crop families and their diseases + pests. Each disease/pest section explains its symptoms, disease cycle/life history, and … More Farmer Book Club: The Farmer Book Of Nightmares
Where do you start with Crop Rotation Design? You start with crop families. Crops in the same family share many of the same diseases and pests. So grouping by family is a good first strategy. Head to your crop plan Add your crop families with some INDEX MATCH Use a PIVOT TABLE to see how … More FSA Tip #40 Add Families To Your Crop Plan
There’s a lot of things you can say about this bunch of turnips that made it to market. Not quite an ideal size balance – one big turnip seems to have slipped in. The rubber band is very expertly placed. That can go a long way in making a mismatched bunch of roots look good. … More A cabbage maggot story
Going to Seed with Dan Brisebois 