Our Growing Practices
Our Growing Practices
One of our most daunting challenges is the control of weeds. Cover cropping and crop rotation are the first means of control through suppressing weed seed germination and growth.
Our greatest weed pressure comes in the summer. The farm is covered in Johnson grass, a perennial weed whose primary means of reproduction is a swarthy, rhizome forming root system. Physical removal of these roots is impossible. For crops that will be in production for several months (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra, squash, cucumbers, and melons) we use thin, plastic mulch. In the past we have used straw mulch, but could not continue due to the risk of introducing new weed seeds and cost. Hopefully in time, we will be able to produce our own hay mulch and return to this method. We space the planting of sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, and peas to enable the use of tractor drawn cultivation equipment.
Spring and fall vegetables are tightly spaced making the only means of cultivation a variety of hoes and our hands. The wheel hoe has a wheel on the front, a stirrup hoe behind it, and two tall handles for easy pushing, making it one of our favorites. This is an amazing tool that takes energy, but is highly efficient. Hand weeding is the most tedious, but also the most effective means of killing those weeds growing close to our crops.
Irrigation is another practice critical to the production of our vegetables. We pump water from the river using small, gas powered pumps. The water flows through a media filter and then into the field in 2-inch flexible pipe. Next we install adapters to go from the large pipe to small “drip-tape”, a plastic tube with emitters spaced every 8 or 12 inches. This eliminates the problems associated with overhead irrigation; water loss through wind blow, evaporation, and water more than the intended area. The dependable, efficient use of irrigation ensures bountiful harvests even in a drought.
Weed Control
Like our pest management strategy, disease control on our farm starts with creating a healthy living soil for our plants. Crop rotation, crop timing, crop protection, and compost tea are all essential disease controls as well. The hot, humid weather of an Alabama summer brings on a wide variety of foliar diseases on tomatoes. Planting tomatoes under the cover of our high tunnel, keeps moisture off the plant’s leaves, lessening the disease pressure.
Our pest management begins with growing strong, healthy plants. This combined with crop rotation, farmscaping, and insect specific biological pesticide application, maintains a healthy, well-balanced garden ecosystem. Crop rotation consists of planning where crops will go years in advance. This ensures crops of the same plant family will be planted in a different place every three years. This breaks pest life cycles preventing their populations from growing to harmful levels.
Farmscaping, the practice of planting specific crops for the purpose of attracting beneficial insects, benefits not only the ecosystem as a whole, but the farmers as well. Marigolds, nasturtium, bachelor buttons, calendula, flowering cash crops (dill, cilantro, fennel, brassicas, and arugula), flowering cover crops, and cut flowers (zinnias, sunflowers, and celosia) all combine to draw an array of predatory beetles and parasitic wasps into the garden. After an appetizer of sweet nectar, these insects move on to a main course of aphids, worms, and grubs.
The use of a lightweight fabric row cover acts as a physical barrier to potential insect threats, helps maintain soil moisture, and provides some frost protection.
Our two problem pests are worms in general and the Yellow-Margined Leaf Beetle (commonly referred to as the “turnip bug” on the farm). For worms we use Bt, Baccilus thuringiensis, a bacteria harmful only to worms. When yellow-margined leaf beetle pressure becomes significant we stop planting the crops they eat and plant subsequent plantings far away. We also use Spinosad, Saccharopolyspora spinosa, a bacteria found in the Carribean. Spinosad photodegrades quickly and is not harmful to predatory insects. Unfortunately, it does not rid us of all “turnip bugs”, but entymologists at Auburn University are researching this pest and other possible biological controls.
Our long term plan is to incorporate livestock into our rotation. This will aid in pest management as well, allowing chickens to be run through a harvested bed so they may feast on insects.
Pest Control
The natural characteristics of our river-bottom soil combined with large additions of organic matter are the backbone of our fertility. From a geologic perspective the silt loam “Tuskaloosa choccolocco” soil type found on the farm possesses a texture enabling it to hold a large amount of nutrients. The addition of organic matter adds nutrients and creates better aeration for water and plant roots to penetrate. We have found the planting of cover crops, a crop planted with the intention of incorporating it in it’s entirety into the soil ahead of a vegetable crop, to be the most efficient way to add organic matter. These cover crops include crimson clover, Austrian winter peas, hairy vetch, cereal rye, oats and wheat in winter and cowpeas, soybeans, buckwheat, millet, sorghum, and sunflowers in summer. The cover crops in the bean family, clover, peas, beans, and vetch, have a relationship with soil micro-organisms in which atmospheric nitrogen is fixed into the soil in nodules located on the plants roots. The process of decomposition of the cover crops by organisms both large (worms and insects) and small (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and actinomycytes) results in a slow, steady release of all the nutrients our growing vegetables need.
When we feel a crop needs extra nitrogen we add about two cups of feather meal per 150 foot growing bed. We apply a liquid fish and seaweed fertilizer as a foliar fed spray and through our drip irrigation.
For our greenhouse grown transplants we make our own potting mix composed of earthworm castings, peat moss, vermiculite, feather meal, rock phosphate, and kelp meal. The worm castings ensure a good amount of micro-organisms are present from all of our plants earliest beginnings.
COVER CROPS
Top: crimson clover
Bottom: sunflowers & sourghum
Left: Austrian winter peas and volunteer mustard
Fertility
