Sustainable Market Farming
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Targeted at serious growers, Sustainable Market Farming is a comprehensive manual for small-scale farmers raising organic crops sustainably on a few acres. Whether you are a beginning market grower or an established enterprise seeking to improve your skills, Sustainable Market Farming is an invaluable resource and a timely book for the maturing local agriculture movement.
Sustainable Market Farming
10h ago
Alkindus lettuce from High Mowing Seeds
This is the last of my series on tips I learned at sustainable farming conferences the past winter. The sessions reported on here were at PASA.
Harvesting Techniques for Small and Medium Scale Farms
This was presented by Julie Henninger and Andy Russell of Goodkeeper Farm in Gardners, PA. They run a Full Diet CSA, with 7.5 acres of vegetables including five high tunnels and outdoor vegetables, and turkeys, cows and pigs. Their well-organized workshop covered their Top Crops (head lettuce, baby greens, carrots, bunched greens and roots); Pre-Harves ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
1w ago
The Barefoot Farmer Volume I, 1993-2000
Book Review
The Barefoot Farmer, Volumes I and II. Jeff Poppen, 2001 and 2021, 233 and 221 pages, 6 x 9 inches approximately, with drawings throughout. $20 each or $35 for two, via https://barefootfarmer.com.
The Barefoot Farmer Volume II, 2000-2011
Jeff Poppen at Long Hungry Creek Farm, TN, is a lively and fascinating farmer and writer. Jeff’s style is folksy, lyrical, reverent, amusing, at times whimsical or iconoclastic, and always attentive to what works, what benefits the land, and how to farm better. No doubt you will heartily agree on some p ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
2w ago
Carrots under shade cloth in summer.
Photo Pam Dawling2023-2024 Conference Tips Part 3 – Climate Change, Less Usual Edible Plants
I reported earlier on good tips I got from the CFSA Conference and the VABF-SFOP Summit. Here I’ll continue the theme.
At the VABF-SFOP Summit, I also attended workshops on Meeting the Climate Challenge with Mark Schonbeck, and Eating and Marketing the Whole Plant with Chris Smith. I’ll tell you more about those now, then move on to the Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference.
Meeting the Climate Challenge: Sharing Stories, Co-Creating Solutions with Mark Scho ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
3w ago
In March, where we undersowed clovers in the broccoli patch in August, the old broccoli trunks are surrounded by a sea of green clover.
Photo by Kathryn Simmons
In December I wrote about Cover Crop Planning for Next Year, including 5 steps of cover crop planning for all opportunities. I have a slideshow Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops, which I find to my surprise that I haven’t posted here since my 2014 version.
Here it is now
<iframe src=”https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/yLTqhulLBKVR9?hostedIn=slideshare&page=upload” width=”476″ height=”400″ frameborder ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
3w ago
VABF/SFOP Summit conference January 2024
At the VABF-SFOP Summit in January, I attended the half-day intensive by Jean-Martin Fortier, Market Gardening 2.0. He covered a brief description of what market gardening is, five different crops that are most profitable, and three management tools for profitable farming. He briefly covered his career from 2004 establishing the 1.5 acre vegetable farm La Grelinette with his wife Maud-Hélène Desroches; his 2015 move to run a training farm school, La Ferme des Quatre-Temps, with 10 2-year trainees per year; his 2023 move to set up a farm-to-t ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
1M ago
A Spacemaster cucumber plant in our hoophouse on April 23.
Photo Pam Dawling
I love learning new things and getting tips for improving our vegetable production. My events page tells you about recent and upcoming conferences. After I get home from conferences, I usually need to dive back into work, and am in danger of ignoring things I learned. Hence this blogpost. I’ll pass tips on, and extract the gems from my hand-written notes, making it more likely I’ll do something useful with them!
CFSA SAC 2023 banner
In November 2023 I took part in the Carolina Farm Stewardship Conference. I wen ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
1M ago
Tokyo bekana in our hoophouse in late December.
Photo Pam Dawling
My Winter-Kill Temperatures of Cold-Hardy Vegetables 2021 has not changed much in recent years. But I’ve just got some precise information on Tokyo bekana, the Asian green that grows well in summer as a lettuce substitute; grows very well outdoors in the fall; and grows wonderfully in the winter hoophouse even in low light conditions. In my 2023 list the outdoor killing temperature is listed as 25°F (–4°C).
Ugly, but not dead yet! Tokyo bekana outdoors on January 7, 2024 after several cold nights at 11°F (-11.5°C) at ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
1M ago
Oats Cover Crop, Steve Groff farm, Holtwood PA. SARE Soil Health Resources Cover Crops for February: Oats if you have a 6–10 week gap
In February, you’ll hopefully have made your crop plans and maps. Perhaps you’ve discovered some beds with no winter cover crop, that you are not using for early spring crops? Those winter annual weeds, chickweed, dead nettle and henbit, will shed lots of seeds if you let them.
If food crops were harvested too late to sow any winter cover crops, in early spring you will be looking at weeds, or “spontaneous vegetation” as I’ve heard them euphemistically called. T ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
2M ago
The Lean Micro Farm cover
The Lean Micro Farm: How to Get Small, Embrace Local, Live Better, and Work Less. Ben Hartman, Chelsea Green Publishers, November 2023. 260 pages, 7 x 10 inches, with color photos, charts and diagrams throughout. $34.95.
Jump in and learn how to make a good living growing vegetables on 1/3 of an acre. Support two adults and two children and provide good-paying jobs for a small farm crew. The ideas and methods here can also be used by home gardeners seeking efficient use of time and space. Or first read Ben Hartman’s previous books The Lean Farm and The Le ..read more
Sustainable Market Farming
2M ago
Young Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, a fast maturing pointed variety.
Photo Pam Dawling
Some of this material is from my book Sustainable Market Farming.
Cabbages can be reliable workhorses, providing large harvests over long periods. In colder regions, cabbages are planted only in the spring and grow all summer, into the fall and winter, until cold weather kills them. In the South, they are a spring/early summer and a fall/overwintered crop, as it’s too hot to grow them in the summer. In parts of California and the Pacific Northwest, they’ll grow year-round.
Cabbage crop requirements
Cabbage ..read more