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...
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...
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...
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...
Over the last 10 years or so, the use of black silage tarps on small farms has become more and more common. This growing popularity of using tarps can largely be attributed to Jean-Martin Fortier from his book, The Market Gardener. JM was, and is, a huge proponent of the benefits of tarping when it comes to weed management and no-till soil preparation for new plots. Occultation is the term for...
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...
How to Use Worm-Powered Composting for Improved Soil Health, Stronger Seedlings & Higher Yields on the Farm – By Jordan MacPhee of Maple Bloom Farm in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Simplifying the Journey to Soil Health We all want healthy living soil to make our job easier as farmers. Living soil makes it easier to grow plants that are more resilient to pest and disease pressure and...
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...
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