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March 15, 2006: Mid-March. There is still a little
dirty snow on the ground, but the sun is getting higher in
the sky. Spring surely can’t be far away.
We still have two tractors torn apart in the shop, so our
winter work isn’t as far along as we had planned. I
hope you’ve gotten all your winter projects completed,
have your field plans laid out in detail and have all your
resources lined up and ready to go.
Speaking of resources, let me mention again the need for
all of us, as organic farmers, to use certified organic seed.
I wrote about this in detail in my November
2006 column. I don’t think I’ve written about
any topic that has received as much feedback
as this topic.
Many of you wrote to tell me you agreed with my main point:
We all need to support the organic industry from seed to table.
But many also wrote to say you have tried organic seed and
found it lacking in many of the characteristics farmers depend
on. We all need accurate germination data, fair representation
of plant type and growing requirements, as well as yield quantity
and quality information. As a community, organic farmers cannot
be expected to buy seed that is not true to type, uniform,
free from weed seed and possessing good germination characteristics.
Organic seed providers need to know that their just being
organic is not reason enough for farmers to purchase their
products. We all realize that this portion of the industry
is less mature than some other sectors may be. From the letters
we’ve received I can tell the support is there, but
the seeds need to measure up to the quality standards farmers
have grown to expect—and need—to make their farms
successful.
Now let’s get back to thinking about spring. It’s
too early to tell if our cover crops have survived the strange
winter weather we experienced this year. The winter started
out unusually warm for an extended time, then it turned cold,
then very cold, and we still had snow on the ground last week.
My plan is to use our no-till roller to no-till plant our
corn and soybeans and even some oats. Last fall we over-seeded
a cover crop of forage radish into our soybeans at leaf yellow
stage. The radish seedlings were a little spindly while the
beans kept their leaves, but then grew through the fall and
early winter to form roots that ranged from one-half inch
to 3 inches in diameter. My hope is that the winter-killed
radish will suppress the weeds enough that we can no-till
plant the oats.
Maximizing organic no-till
Our goal is to use our cover-crop based no-till system to
plant as many crops as we can in our crop rotation, as often
as possible. We’re not capable of no-tilling every crop
every year. We’ll till the soil as needed at some rotation
points to establish our cover crops. We know if we can get
an excellent establishment of my cover crops that we’ll
stand a very good chance of growing our cash crop weed free,
with little or no tillage, with no extra nitrogen and a whole
lot less labor.
There is no place on the farm that feels more like spring
right now than the inside of our greenhouse. This week we
sowed all of our early brassicas. The onion and leek seeds
were started weeks ago. We have always used our own compost
as the base ingredient for our potting mix. We add perlite
and vermiculite to the mix along with some peat moss.
This year we are switching from peat to a coconut-fiber byproduct
called coir. This is all part of our goal to use renewable
resources wherever possible, and the harvesting of peat has
environmental impacts in terms of its renewability.
The smell of the damp soil coming from the mist rack in the
greenhouse lets me know planting season is coming fast.
Well, it’s off to finish the farm’s organic certification
forms—that nasty paperwork. It’s probably that
time on your farm as well. Hopefully, you’ve taken my
advice and that of many others and kept up with your field
and crop records, your soil and water test data and your financial
accounting so that the process is painless.
Almost painless, that is. I’ve started keeping track
of all our field work on a Microsoft Access file. It’s
so easy to fill out the paperwork once the information is
entered—just a few keystrokes and clicks and let the
printer do its thing.
If any of you have come up with good new ideas for farm record
keeping—especially for your organic certification requirements—let
me know so I can share your techniques with other farmers.
Because that’s how we all learn.
From One Farm to Another
Jeff
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