By Tim King Every seed in every packet that a seed company ships to a gardener or farmer is throbbing with biological vitality and a barely fathomable web of stories and culture. Take, for instance, the beautiful open-pollinated Swiss chard, called Heart of Gold, that Johnny’s Selected Seeds released in late 2022. The catalog describes
By Caleb Goossen, Ph.D., MOFGA Crop Specialist With gardens put to bed for the winter, now is the time when gardeners reflect on the prior season and begin planning for the next. For many, it is the time to evaluate seed supply, and order seeds for the coming year. This is also a great time
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin In Denver, Colorado, Steve Farr was a full-time computer systems engineer at a university and later at a consulting firm. “Being gone 10 to 12 hours a day, I felt like I hardly knew my children,” he says. “I wanted to do something different, and my wife Kari and I came to
If you’re new to growing vegetables or just need a refresher, here’s a basic vegetable planting calendar to get you started. We’ve also included a few herbs that are often grown similarly to vegetables. The dates are approximate — and based on USDA Plant Hardiness zone 5 — and will vary depending on your location,
by Eric Sideman, PhDMOFGA’s Organic Crop Specialist Emeritus Farmers developed soil-less mixes for use in containers for seedlings because field soil does not work well. Soil alone is heavy and poorly aerated. It tends to become waterlogged and sticky when wet. Then it shrinks when it dries, pulls away from the container edges and turns
Photo 1. Photo 2. June 1, 2020 By Jonathan Mitschele Photos by the author The older plaster walls in my 1850s farmhouse were made by spreading wet plaster on a framework of thin wood strips, or laths. I don’t know what folks shopping at Home Depot or the like buy lath for today,
Downy mildew on winter spinach in a high tunnel. Photo by Eric Sideman By Caleb Goossen, Ph.D. Winter-grown greens have increased dramatically in popularity, and subsequently in ubiquity, over the past couple of decades. We are miles beyond the era of my grandmother’s childhood in northern Vermont, where the “hungry period” set in during the end of winter
Michele Carmel and Albie Barden at their Norridgewock home. One aspect of “living with the corn.” A Benjamin & Co. model corn sheller made in Winthrop in the 1800s By Jean English Photos by the author “We live with the corn, in all of its manifestations.” Michele Carmel’s understatement amuses me as I sit with Albie Barden
Among the piles of screens, sieves, fans and motorized contraptions that we’ve cobbled together over the years to clean seed on our farm, the aspirator seed cleaner we built based on Real Seeds open source plans (https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html) is one of the more efficient and versatile processing tools at our disposal for dry seeds. A vacuum
Banatka wheat with a dense understory of Dutch white clover, and no weeds. Hand harvesting Banatka wheat. Temporary storage in a drying cart. Threshing uses a modified MacKissic chipper-shredder. By Ben Hoffman After struggling for 10 years trying to grow and process cereal grains, I joined forces with an equally frustrated Bob Mowdy. We worked
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