Succession planting refers to strategically planning out a sequence (or succession) of crops that will be planted one after another in a designated area throughout your growing season. On a small-scale bio-intensive market farm, the goal is to maximize the yield of a limited growing space. This makes strategic succession planting of utmost performance. The more rotations of high-value crops you...
Having a large enough space to keep your veggies adequately cool until delivery is incredibly important. With all of the painstaking labor that has gone into planting, protecting, harvesting, washing, and packing your beautiful produce, the last thing you want is for it to spoil due to an insufficient cooling space! Different Cooling OptionsStandard RefrigeratorCommercial Refrigerator (“Two-Door...
Having an efficient wash/pack station on your farm is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure to have in place when you first design your farm. When the first harvest starts, you don’t want to be scrambling around piecing something together last minute. You need to be able to wash, package and cool your product. Otherwise, all your hard work to finally reach the point of the harvest...
A 30” wide bed is the most common standardized width in the world of market gardening today. It’s an easy width to straddle for most body types, doesn’t hyperextend the back when reaching into the center of the bed from the pathway, and most tools and supplies are built to accommodate this size. If such is the case, it would seem that it would be counterintuitive for a grower to deviate...
For those of you who have worked with a BCS walk-behind tractor, you have learned that the heavier your implement is, the harder it is to turn the machine around at the end of a bed. The Power Harrow, for example, is an extremely heavy implement. In order to turn the tractor at the end of the bed, the operator will typically disengage the PTO for safety, lower the handles for leverage, and then...
When you are leasing land, or on a tighter budget, constructing an adequate nursery space can be a challenging prospect. While a beautiful high tunnel with cement floors, a drainage system, permanent plumbing, polycarbonate end walls, and automated heating and cooling systems would be IDEAL, it’s often not within reach–at least when starting out. When I was faced with this dilemma at the...
Is it worth the effort to make your own compost on a small-scale farm? If you decide that it’s not, what do you do with your old crop residue? Most would agree that it’s often not feasible to create enough compost to meet all the fertility needs of your farm, especially on a small piece of land. This is especially true for those trying to increase the organic matter in their soil, or for...
After exploring what the deep compost mulch system is, looking at the pros and cons, and how to source your compost, it’s time to get into the details of building deep compost beds from start to finish. The ideal progression of steps is as follows: 1. Leveling the Ground & Ensuring Good Drainage2. Test & Amend the Soil3. Preparing Soil with Silage TarpsOccultationWater Before...
In the final part of our series on the benefits and how-to’s of leasing land for market gardening, we turn to the specifics of converting leased land into an urban farm. The Initial Conversion Turning a newly rented piece of land into a farm is a process. Before signing the lease, Curtis takes a shovel and digs into the ground to check the soil and to look for invasive weeds. This is an...
In the first two parts of this series, we’ve covered the benefits of leasing land to start a market garden and how much you should expect to pay for that land. Today we’ll cover how to increase the value of your rented land. There’s No Shortage of Land According to urban farmer Curtis Stone, “Land is basically free. Not to buy, but to use.” There’s a ton of uncultivated land just sitting...
Recent Comments