Category: Soil

Soil Sampling

By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. Organic farming is centered on taking care of the soil. You do not need soil to produce crops, as hydroponic farms show. But organic farmers hold tightly to the belief that for sustainable crop production, one needs and expects a lot from one’s soil. Consequently, organic farmers do a lot to

Read More »

Managing Soil Phosphorus

Phosphorus deficient crops can be stunted; leaves may turn purple; and flowering and new shoot growth will be delayed. Often, cold soils or an improper pH for growth limit phosphorus availability, even while the soil holds plenty of phosphorus. Sideman photo. By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. After nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) is the next nutrient most

Read More »

Potassium

Potassium deficiency on tomato leaves appears as mottled chlorosis (yellowing) and tip burn. Sideman photo. Yellow shoulder on tomatoes has no single cause but is related to a lack of foliage, varietal susceptibility and potassium deficiency. Sideman photo. By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. In the past two issues of The MOF&G, I discussed the plant mineral

Read More »

Managing Nitrogen Fertility

Nitrogen deficiency often appears as a uniform yellowing on the lower leaves of plants. English photo. By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. Nitrogen (N) is the nutrient most commonly limiting crop growth and yield on organic farms. This is especially true when creating a farm from an old, abandoned field and when transitioning from conventional to organic

Read More »

Living Soil

Professor Gilles Lemieux, the father of pedogenesis applied to agriculture. By Céline Caron Soil is much more than “dirt.” Why is such a disrespectful word still used for one of the major components of life on Earth? Humanity could not be sustained without the living soils and the living oceans. Let’s banish the word “dirt”

Read More »

Organic Matter

By Eric Sideman, Ph.D., MOFGA’s Director of Technical Services It always amuses me to think back to when I was young and, like most, I understood very little of what my parents did. Now that I am an adult, most of their former actions make sense. Sometimes they had good reasons for their behavior and

Read More »

Angleworms

Illustration from “Earthworm Biology and Production,” Leaflet 2828, University of California Cooperative Extension, Berkeley, Calif., 1977. By Jean Ann Pollard Always with us and the farmer’s friend. Right? Is that what you think when you think ‘gardening’ – when you see those long, red angleworms surfacing all over the lawn and under the rhubarb after

Read More »

Too Much Organic Matter

Compost is great stuff. The material shown here is recycled into a vibrant soil that feeds the beautiful perennial flowers and herbs on MOFGA’s grounds. Too much compost or other organic matter, however, can increase the phosphorus concentration in soils to the point where the element may become a pollutant. So have your soil tested

Read More »

Healthy Soil

Cornell Soil Test Report. Bianca Moebius-Clune, a graduate student at Cornell University, introduced the Cornell Soil Health Test (CSHT) at the 2008 Farmer-to-Farmer Conference, and Dennis King of King Hill Farm in Penobscot, Maine, told how he evaluates soil health on the diversified farm that he and Jo Barrett own and run. The CSHT, the

Read More »

Bio Char

Black Gold for Soil, Long-Term Carbon Storage for Earth by Jean English Biochar (or agrichar) is the product of pyrolysis – of burning plant material under controlled, low-oxygen conditions (in a kiln, for example) to produce charcoal. Adding this highly stable form of carbon to soils may increase plant yields (especially on degraded soils); reduce

Read More »
Categories
Scroll to Top