There’s a special smell that comes with rotting cucumbers. When you save cucumbers for seed, you let them get big and yellow. And you might stack them in a bin for a few weeks to let them get even more yellow and mature. (And maybe because you forgot to deal with them on time.) The … More That special rotting cucumber smell
Last year, I had a favourite sunflower. I watched it at every stage through the growing season and through the winter. And the stalk lingered long into a second year. It’s been hard to find a new favourite flower this year. Much harder than I expected. There was a mullein that I really liked. But … More A Zinnia in the garden
You can watch the video ere. So, did you manage to record every harvest you did this summer? Do you have perfect records of how much crop came out of the field? Yes, these records would be wonderful. But if things got a little out of hand this year (or maybe a lot out of … More fsa tip #77 – What to do if you didn’t take harvest records
You can watch the video ere. I’m sure this never happens to you, you plant a bunch of stuff but don’t record it during the growing season? And then, in the middle of the winter when you’re going to get crop planning, you can’t remember how many beds of peppers you planted last year? Well, … More fsa tip #76 – Go and record what’s in your field before it’s too late
Each bucket has the seeds from 1 lettuce plant. These were quickly cleaned in the field and then put in separate bins. These are the seeds of our 7 favourite lettuce plants from an F2 population of a cross between Jericho Romaine and Deer Tongue lettuce. The seeds I collected are the F3 generation. We … More Saving F3 lettuce seeds
I made the front cover of Growing For Market with my article about running a Team Season review. We do a team season review every September at Tourne-Sol Co-operative Farm. It is one of the most significant ways we’ve figured out how to improve farm operations. In the article I break down how we run … More Running a team season review
A little story about Dill and Cilantro and #seedsavingformarketgrowers Back in May We had 1 bed in the middle of the greenhouse planted the first half in 5 rows of cilantro and the second half in 5 rows of dill. This planting was harvested for CSA. A lot of dill and cilantro were packed out … More Saving seed from CSA cilantro and dill
You can watch the video ere. One of the first steps to start Crop Planning for your farm is to make a sales plan. You want to set up a table with your crops along the left side and the weeks you’ll be at market or CSA along the top of the table. Then you … More fsa tip #75 – Highlight when your crops are available in your sales plan
Bins as tables and bins as bins. When we’re screening seed lots in the field we use what we have on hand. This is a big brassica lot that we just stomped and I’m screening out most of the chaff to reduce the amount of matter we bring indoors. The screen is just ¼” hardware … More Bins and seed cleaning
Once we’ve pulled a bed of garlic, we immediately separate out the garlic we’re going to plant this fall. This way we make sure that we have enough seed stock. And we make sure it looks good! My next free online workshop is on Thursday Sept 22 at 2pm Eastern … More details coming soon!
Going to Seed with Dan Brisebois 