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
A comfortable, practically fly-proof humanure privy. Photo courtesy of Will Bonsall. By Will Bonsall For much of modern history, we humans have not assumed much personal responsibility for our own body wastes. Instead, we’ve had collective solutions that have always created more problems than they’ve solved. We’ve had lower class people emptying our latrines and
By Adam Tomash 1. Materials. Brown materials are high in carbon, green materials are high in nitrogen. Mix the two in rough proportions of 2 volumes of brown to 1 volume of green to achieve a C:N ratio of 25:1 to 40:1. Remember that different sources of nitrogen have differing amounts of nitrogen; e.g., alfalfa
This portrait of Franklin Hiram King appeared in his 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries (First edition). By John Koster A hundred years after his death, monuments to Franklin Hiram King dot the landscapes of farm country all over North America, even in places where his name is unknown or has long been forgotten. King
By Eric Sideman A book from the 1950s by J.I. Rodale called the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening refers to ‘compost water.’ “It is no trouble to make,” writes Rodale. “All you have to do is fill a sprinkling can half with finished compost and half with water.” Rodale points out that some of the valuable
Master Gardeners provided this display of compost containers and a thermometer at Brae Maple Farm one summer. They include a rotating drum (Compos-Tumbler), a bin made from recycled plastic and one made from pallets. A series of three wooden bins in a row (made from pallets or constructed of wood) will enable a gardener to
By Jean English Bocashi is fermented organic material that has been used traditionally in Japan (where it’s spelled ‘bokashi’) as fertilizer. Making bokashi is an ancient art in Japan, with many recipes, often handed down (sometimes along with bokashi starter) through families. According to the Fall 2004 issue of La Cosecha, the publication of Sustainable
A large compost pile is made with a 25-foot length of snow fence. Green (nitrogenous) and brown (carbonaceous) layers of organic materials are alternated. By Adam Tomash and June Zellers © 2007 Photos by the authors Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and cucurbits are among our favorite crops. All require warm soil and a fairly long growing season, which means they need a protected, heated space
Tat soi, sown 8/11/07, was ready to eat at the Common Ground Country Fair on Sept. 21. English photo. by Jean English No surprise: I came home from the Common Ground Country Fair with a cornucopia of gardening ideas; and the lush results that came from taking a little time, space, seed and compost that
The Dirt on Potting Soil by Craig Idlebrook Copyright 2006 Last year, I tried container gardening after grabbing the first bags of potting soil I found at the local big box store. If the bags had been any more generic looking, they would have said “ACME.” The packaging had almost no information about the content
Media Inquiries:
Contact Jennifer Wilhelm [email protected]
