Archives: Resources

Cover Crops

By Lee Stivers, Frances Tucker and Claudia Olivier Integrating cover crops into vegetable production systems is a good idea. Cover crops add organic matter to our often carbon-starved vegetable soils, improve tilth in soils damaged by frequent tillage or heavy machinery; recycle plant nutrients; and in some cases suppress weeds and other pests. Vegetable growers

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Row Covers

By Kerstin Tengeler I am an organic vegetable farmer in St. Lawrence County in upstate New York. My partners and I use row covers on our 4-acre farm to extend our growing season and to protect our crops from insects and deer. Because minimizing the use of plastics that end up in landfills is important

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Pruning

Correctly pruned branch. Bunker illustration. By John Bunker The ice storm in January damaged many thousands of trees throughout much of Maine. Although it wasn’t much more than light rain, and drizzle, it certainly took an incredible toll on our landscape. Fortunately the apple trees fared pretty well in most yards and orchards, most certainly

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Forestry

A Three-part Strategy to Save and Restore Forests By William Sugg Members of the Forest Ecology Network (FEN) are visiting a tree harvesting operation in Piscataquis county, but it’s not a protest: They like what they see. Ideally they are looking at the future of forestry in Maine – Low Impact Forestry. Low Impact Forestry

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Watercress

By Norma Jean Langford From the ferry landing, day-trippers wander past a marina crowded with yachts. On Sausalito’s main street, they window-shop Versace gowns, jewelry and paintings, but commuters head for a wedding cake fountain flanked by cement elephants. Here a ceremonial stairway rises straight and steep into the cliff face, and from it trails

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Compost

From the Farmer to Farmer Conference • November, 1997 Spring comes. You transplant your seedlings into a potting mix made with your own (or purchased) compost. Your seedlings, which were healthy, green and growing before being transplanted, turn yellow and may even shrink. What went wrong? As participants at MOFGA’s Farmer to Farmer Conference learned from

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Herbs

Toki Oshima drawing From the Farmer to Farmer Conference • November, 1997 The business of growing herbs organically has room for plenty of growth, according to West Rockport herbalist Deb Soule, who addressed a large audience at MOFGA’s Farmer to Farmer Conference in November. Anyone who wants to learn about herbs can learn a lot from

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Going Native With Pollinators

By Sue Smith-Heavenrich I spent 10 minutes one morning last summer watching the bees in my blooming asparagus – the bumblebees, honeybees and a number of smaller bees I couldn’t immediately identify. They were incredibly busy, moving from one flower to the next. In the squash and pumpkin blossoms, small bumblebees were vibrating, making quite

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Shell Beans

Drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey For the first time in almost, 20 years of preserving food, I had a surplus of canned green beans and tomato sauce. I had planned on putting up a little less food as my son, Isak, was leaving for college. I hadn’t planned on my daughter having swim

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Seeds

Drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey When we plant a seed, we create a direct link between our ancestral past and our potential future. The seed we plant has traveled around the world, from farmer to farmer, from native populations to traders and conquerors to royalty and eventually back to farmers. The carrot seed

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