After months of anticipation, my first online spreadsheet course is just about here! This week I’m giving two live webinars that will lead into the course. The webinar is called Build A Better Farm Crop Plan (without all the copy pasting, endless columns, and thousands of open tabs) It is about The 3 Things I … More Build A Better Farm Crop Plan
This week, we take a break from our regularly scheduled Farmer Spreadsheet Tip to announce the A 4-part online mini course for market gardeners who dream about saving some of their own seeds. The first class is just before the new year. Just in time to plan your 2020 growing season! Dec. 30 Why Grow … More Announcing the Seed Saving for Market Growers FREE Mini Course
You are invited to join us for a webinar on Planning Vegetable Seed Crops. The first in our series “Growing for Seed: The Fundamentals” this webinar will feature presentations from Patrick Steiner (Stellar Seeds, BC), Daniel Brisebois (Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm, QC), and Michelle Smith (Northwind Farm, NS). Together they’ll cover a range of topics to get you started in your seed … More Planning Seed Crops Webinar – Wed. Feb 19, 2014
Last week, we harvested our first Brassica rapa seed crops of the year. As we start this year’s harvest, I have also been watching some of the remnants of previous years’s seed crops. Harvest The brassicas overwintered in a field tunnel and then flowered in April – a bit earlier than usual. I have been walking … More This Year’s First Seed Harvest and Volunteers from Previous Years
This week we got all the frost sensitive seed crops into the ground: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beans, and some more flowers. Seed crops planted on the same date go into the same beds. This lets us prepare the beds at the same time and doesn’t leave unused area to grow weeds. We alternate blocks of … More Planting, roguing, thinning, watering, and pigs
This year’s weather has been all over. Two weeks ago, it was downright chilly with a couple frosty nights. Not unusual for May but unexpected after balmy April. Last week, the temperature creeped into the high 20s (Celsius) – every day crops were noticeable bigger. And this week’s forecast has a high of 34C on Wednesday! … More Field Update: Some Cover Crops and a Garlic preview
So you’ve planted a climate appropriate crop on an appropriate planting date and at an appropriate spacing; now you you get to sit back and wait for the plants to bolt and yield piles of seed like there is no tomorrow … don’t you??? Just like growing vegetables, growing seed means weeding weeding weeding. In … More Seeds and Weeds
Last Saturday I attended Eco-Farm Day in Cornwall, Ontario put on by the Ottawa Chapter of Canadian Organic Growers. The day always goes by a little too quickly – too many friends to catch up with and big decisions at to what workshops I want to attend. This year, I took in a talk on … More Choosing Seed Crops
My first seed harvests were from vegetables that bolted and didn’t make it to market. This worked well for a bit, and then it didn’t . I learned that if you want a reliable seed harvest, the crop has to go into the ground with that goal in mind. This means planting at the right … More Plant Seed Crops on Time
We grow quite a bit of our own seed, but our farm still buys seed from other seed companies. The high disease pressure that we face in our hot and humid climate keeps us from producing high quality seed for seed crops. In some cases, the crop actually succumbs before producing any seed. More often, … More A few thoughts on disease in seed crops
