View previous posts What is Companion Planting? Biointensive farming expert, John Jeavons, defines companion planting as “the placing together of plants having complementary physical demands.” He broadens the definition even further, saying it is “the growing together of all those elements and beings that encourage life and growth: the creation of a microcosm that includes vegetables, fruits...
Is Crop rotation Unnecessary?
View previous posts “If you get the soil biology right, there’s absolutely no reason to rotate to a different crop. Our understanding of agriculture is flawed. As human beings, when we start paying attention to how nature manages things, we start changing our agriculture to work the way nature works. Nature has been managing to do this process for the last three and a half to four billion years...
Principles of Crop Rotation for the Market Garden
View previous posts Crop rotation is the practice of changing the crop each year on the same piece of ground, in an effort to confuse pests, reduce weed pressure, and ensure the soil does not get depleted of certain nutrients. Eliot Coleman, considered to be one of the godfathers of market gardening, says that crop rotation “is the single most important process in a multi-cropping program” (The...
Old School Row Cropping Vs. Permanent Beds
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...
Farmer Burnout – A Real Problem
You’ve heard about the profitability of urban farming, and maybe you’re raring to go at this point. But let’s slow down a bit and talk about something that not many people discuss in the farming space: burnout. Burnout Seasons Urban farmer Curtis Stone says he experiences burnout every season: spring, summer, and the grand finale: the fall burnout. The spring burnout comes from...
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