Posts Tagged ‘fertilizer’

Starting Seeds

March 9th, 2010
Willow Springs Farm | Blog
In Eliot Coleman’s book “The New Organic Grower”, he describes an intriguing process of starting seeds. Instead of the traditional plastic containers and flats, he recommends using a tool called a soil blocker. The soil blocker is filled with “blocking mix” and presses out squares with an indent for planting your seed. I was immediately on board with this method. It reduces our plastic consumption and provides a more suitable home for our seeds (less likely to dry out and no fear of root boundedness).

Unfortunately, the soil blockers can be hard to come by. They are hand-made in England and shipped over to the U.S. by only a few distributors and they can be rather pricey. They are available through Peaceful Valley (order early in the growing season as they can take a while coming from England). I also recommend buying the book, “Transplants in Soil Blocks” from PV as well.

Based on the size of our operation (we anticipate making about 20,000 starts for the spring/summer growing season), we opted for the professional stand up floor soil blocker that can make 12 2” blocks at a time. This is the ideal size for starting most seeds. In fact we are starting all but 4 vegetables from seed (we are direct seeding carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, and radishes).

Blocking Mix Recipe (adapted from Eliot Coleman’s recipe):

30 oz. coco fiber (we are using this instead of peat moss)
20 oz. perlite (I’ve heard you can use rice hulls instead of perlite - something I am curious to try out)
Mix thoroughly.
10 oz garden soil (dug from our garden and sifted through a 1/2” hardware cloth)
20 oz compost
1 1/2 cups fertilizer mix (equal parts greensand, blood meal, and soft rock phosphate)
Mix thoroughly.
Add water. (The best advice I heard was that the consistency of the mix should resemble oatmeal - wet but not runny. I usually add about a 4:1 ratio of mix to water.)

A double batch of this mix fits perfectly in a 32 gallon trash can. Each batch makes approximately 250 2” soil blocks.

To make the soil blocks, I spread our mix out on a tarp in our hoop house with a 3 sided plywood tray ready and waiting. First, I make sure that the mix is wet enough by feeling it. Then I plunge the soil blocker into a large pile of mix, twisting side-to-side to fill it and rocking back and forth to ensure it doesn’t fall out. I then quickly and effortlessly lift the tool and scrape off any extra mix with either the side of the table/board or my hand. I then place the blocker directly on my tray and eject the 12 seed homes. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.

For our heat loving plants (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants), we started them using a 3/4 inch soil blocker. I am not sure this is worth it. While more of them fit on the heat mats, they dry out too quickly. I think for our second seeding I will be sticking with 2” blocks. We will “pot them on” to 4” soil blocks once they get bigger. The 4” soil blockers come with built in inserts that press a 2” hole in the top of the block perfect for potting on.

I am really excited about how well this mix and method seems to be working for our seedlings. The germination rates are very high in our hoop house. We will be planting our first seedlings of broccoli, lettuces, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and beets outdoors early next week.


Fruit and forking

(THIS IS FROM A FEW DAYS AGO, SORRY!)
Just ended a two day period for Fruits according to the Biodynamic calendar.  It was a busy one as the last fruit period was too cold and wet to plant our many fruit seedlings and starts.  The fruit category consists of those plants which have their “fruit” in the realm of the seed such as beans, peas, lentils, maize, tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin and etc.  We were able to do some preparations prior to this period in planning for all the transplanting that we wanted to do.

We prepared our tomato rows by:
adding one yard of compost per 35’ row
tilling in the compost and mounding up the row (1’ high, 30” wide)
digging the planting holes (every two feet)
adding in our fertilizer, which consists of alfalfa meal, kelp meal, fish bone meal, oyster shell, greensand, rock phosphate, agricultural lime, and dolomitic lime.

We also prepared our 100’ rows for beans, cucumbers, melons, squash, and pumpkins.  We did this by visiting our local certified organic composting facility and picking up one and a half yards of compost each visit in the back of our 1984 full size truck.  I’ve gotten to know the owners a bit which is wonderful.  I even got a chance to chat with the owner after closing time about heirloom seeds and varieties.  A few days later by request, I delivered one of our red varieties of heirloom tomato starts.  It’s such a wonderful feeling to passing along one of our starts to someone who is excited and appreciative at the quality of our plants and can’t wait to rush home and plant it. 
So yes,  lot’s of compost forking going on.  I believe we moved around 6-8 yards in the past few days.  One wheelbarrow dump after another we covered our rows. 

Fruit day arrived on Thursday night at 8 pm and thus we began transplanting.  For the last hour and a half of day light we transplanted tomatoes one after another over at our greenhouses at Lincoln.  An early rise on Friday and we started in on the squash and beans.  Having to stop a bit before we would of liked we switched to harvesting and organizing our tomato starts for market day. 
All together we managed to get tomatoes, beans, summer squash, winter squash and cucumbers planted.
Now we’re in Root so I spent the night cultivating our rows of potatoes.

I’m glad to report the duck seems to be improving.  Sara has done an impressive job with some gauze and bandaged our girl up nice and tight to ensure the healing process.  It’s kinda weird having a duck live in our bathroom.  Farming.  I love it!



Onion Planting, etc.

Yeah!  Pete and the intern crew just finished planting out the onions today.  There are now ten 100 foot beds planted, each with 4 rows with roughly 3 plants per foot = 12,000 plants!  This year we grew Copra, New York Early, Mercury, Purplette, Ailsa Craig, Gold Coin, and seed-grown Shallots.  Now it’s just a matter of weeding and watering. I also just finished applying fertilizer to the next acre of ground.  I used a drop spreader to apply lime at 1 ton per acre and soft rock phosphate… Read the rest of this article »

Celery… It takes a while

September 24th, 2008
Four Frog Farm | Blog
Like all good things in life, I will tell this to my son, you must wait to reap the harvest. This is good advice, dad.  But geeze, 8 months?  is anything worth it.  I like the celery that I am eating now.  I seeded it in the greenhouse in mid-January (actually, Andrea did), planted it out in April.  You know, I wonder if I could have sped up its maturity with tons of water and fertilizer for those first few months, to have celery at the later part of June?  I know for sure that I didn’t… Read the rest of this article »

Two farms are starting from scratch.

They are turning the dirt and hoping to be successful enough to turn a profit, and to become a valuable part of their communities as suppliers of organically grown food.

Peaceful Valley is giving them a head start by offering them special pricing as part of this Freshman Farmer program.

The Farm Blogs

Freshman:
New Farms Coming Soon!
Sophomores:
Laughing Duck Farm
Newcastle, CA
Starbright Acres
12575 Polaris Dr, Grass Valley, CA
Graduates:
Coyote House Farm
Palermo, CA
Daily Grace Farms
Crescent City, CA
DeepSeeded Community Farm
Arcata, CA
Driftwood Farm
Fort Bragg, CA
EarthDance Farm
St. Louis, MO
Ellwood Canyon Farms
Goleta, CA
Freestone Family Farm
Vernal, UT
Hand Sown Homegrown Heritage Farm
Poulsbo, WA
Home Plate Organic Farm
Orleans, CA
Honey in the Heart Farm
Nevada City, CA
Willow Springs Farm
Penn Valley, CA
Wise Moon Farm
Redding, CA

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About the Farms

Coyote House Farm
Palermo, CA
Daily Grace Farms
Crescent City, CA
DeepSeeded Community Farm
Arcata, CA
Driftwood Farm
Fort Bragg, CA
EarthDance Farm
St. Louis, MO
Ellwood Canyon Farms
Goleta, CA
Four Frog Farm
Penn Valley, CA
Freestone Family Farm
Vernal, UT
Hand Sown Homegrown Heritage Farm
Poulsbo, WA
Home Plate Organic Farm
Orleans, CA
Honey in the Heart Farm
Nevada City, CA
Laughing Duck Farm
Newcastle, CA
Starbright Acres
12575 Polaris Dr, Grass Valley, CA
Willow Springs Farm
Penn Valley, CA
Wise Moon Farm
Redding, CA

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