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TexasMadness Profile
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New Farmer Workshop


My mom and I attended a 6 hour new farmer workshop yesterday. It was fun to hear the adventures - and misadventures! - of more experienced farmers. And to see we are not the only ones struggling with the early heat. We learned a lot and hope to apply some things soon to our farm. Most importantly, working on soil health and being more aggressive about pest control - we've lost a lot this year to squash vine borers.

And it has made me realize we have so, so much to learn. I knew we were beginners, but I think there are so many resources out there that we don't have to be "trial and error". We need to go to more classes like this!
6/13/2011, 2:57 pm Link to this post Send Email to TexasMadness   Send PM to TexasMadness
 
Firlefanz Profile
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


Sounds as if that class will be very helpful, as well as being fun.

Glad you can attend something like this!

  emoticon emoticon emoticon emoticon

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Hannah Steenbock
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Saijen SilverWolf1 Profile
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


Texas, how awesome that y'all got to go to that workshop. It sounds like it was very informational, helpful and fun. And maybe you can make some connections with some of these more experienced farmers so you can ask questions further down the road, if you need to. I hope y'all are able to attend some more of these.

What are some of the things you learned, that you think some of us who are on a much smaller scale, could possibly put to use?

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TexasMadness Profile
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


One of the big things they talked about was building soil health. They highly recommend soil testing and at a lab that will then tell you what you need to amend with. My notes are at home, but I think there was one in your part of the country that was recommended.

You don't have fruit trees do you? I didn't know but garden (vegetable) soil supports a bacterial soil food web. That's a good thing. Orchard soil should support a fungal soil food web. Think of a big healthy forest with the damp ground and heavy layer of leaf litter - that's just where you would see mushrooms growing. They've evolved a wonderful symbiosis and the fungi live on in the roots and draw nutrients from the soil for the tree. So our young orchard has been planted in old pasture - a bacterial soil. We need to do everything possible to get it more fungal to help the tree absorb nutrients. So we are adding more heavy wood mulch and leaves around the trees and pulling back the grasses farther and farther from the trunks.

Lessee, what else? If you use drip irrigation (we do), it's a great idea to do 'fertigation' and put liquid fertilizer in the line - especially if you have sandy soils like us. Duh. I have no idea why we haven't been doing this!

Lots else, but so many things are site specific. A lot of it was giving us tools to figure out what was good for our particular place. And lot on selling products too.

It was a lot of fun!

Last edited by TexasMadness, 6/15/2011, 10:59 pm
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


I would be very interested in the stuff for this area that was mentioned. I think we have an issue in one part of our garden that we need to take care of, but we're not sure what the issue is, or what to do for it.

And yes, we have 3 apple trees, right at the edge of the garden....so, may need to dug up the grass around the trunks some and invest in some wood mulch to put around them. We have a problem with bag worms (or as hubby calls them, silk worms) and have had to get many out of all 3 trees. I think the last frost got most of the blossoms....doesn't look like we'll get much off them this year.

Irrigation is mostly done with a mounted sprinkler system, but we've not been able to use it the last year or so...we don't have a strong enough pump to get the water from the spring, up the hill, across the driveway, up another hill and to the garden, so we've been just using soaker hoses hooked up to the regular spigot on the side of the house when it gets too dry..but we have to watch that we don't run the well dry. NOT a good thing...been there, done that!! Thankfully, we've been getting some rain at least every other day right now, and it's a decent amount, so the garden is getting plenty of water....but it won't always be that easy!!

I need to find out if they do anything like that workshop up here anywhere.....would benefit us, I'm sure. We're not farmers, exactly, but it would help us be a bit more conscious of what the soil needs in order to do it's job in production.....just not sure how I'd go about finding out if they do anything like that here. Wonder if the Co-Op would know....hmmmmmmmmmmmm emoticon

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Re: New Farmer Workshop


Interesting!

Back in the 1970s when my parents built their house and planted a garden (on an old field), my mom discovered compost. I still have the book she got then, by an old gardener and landscaper.

She followed his suggestion of clearing a fairly large part surrounding the fruit trees (around each stem) of any grass and using compost and mulch to help the trees grow. Sounds a lot like what you learned in your class, TM. emoticon

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Hannah Steenbock
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6/16/2011, 10:27 am Link to this post Send Email to Firlefanz   Send PM to Firlefanz Blog
 
TexasMadness Profile
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


I'd always heard and seen that grass was removed for a certain distance around a trunk but never knew the science behind it (and remember that I'm a science nerd!). We used to have about a 2 foot diameter grassless area, but we are now expanding that even more.

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Firlefanz Profile
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


Yeah, we used about a yard+ on each side around our trees. And the parts were square, for ease mowing around the trees. emoticon

The old gardener did mention "soil organisms", but thought that for every part, the right kind would grow, and even better with the help of compost. So we dumped compost on those areas, and covered them with mulch, in addition.

Last edited by Firlefanz, 6/16/2011, 5:24 pm


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Hannah Steenbock
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Re: New Farmer Workshop


This may explain why these apple trees have not done well....and the part of the garden that is having issues is right next to those apple trees...so, I have to wonder if maybe the apple trees aren't pulling some of the nutrients from the garden area!! Never thought of that before!!!! Hmmmm (scratches head)

Need to talk to hubby about digging the grass up from around them...and Firle, doing it in a square actually makes perfect sense to me! Of course, with weed eaters now, just use it to edge things and keep the grass down. Easier to get under the branches with that than a mower!

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6/17/2011, 4:26 am Link to this post Send Email to Saijen SilverWolf1   Send PM to Saijen SilverWolf1 Yahoo
 


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