Eliot Coleman: The New Organic Grower

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Eliot Coleman The New Organic Grower
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Topics Covered in The New Organic Grower

• Agricultural Craftsmanship
• Land
• Scale Capital
• Part-time Help

• Marketing Strategy
• Planning Observation
• Crop Rotation
• Green Manures
• Tillage

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Topics Covered in The New Organic Grower
continued

• Soil Fertility
• Farm Generated Fertility
• Direct Seeding
• Transplanting
• Soil Blocks

• Setting out Transplants
• Weeds
• Pests
• Pests Temporary Palliatives (reduce the damage
  caused by)

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Topics Covered in The New Organic Grower
continued

• Harvest
• Marketing
• Season Extension
• The Movable Feast
• The Winter Garden

• Livestock
• Information Resources Do you really want to farm?
• Final note
• From Artichokes to Zucchini

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Eliots Goals

• Simplify production techniques
• Find and use the most efficient machinery and
  tools
• Reduce expenditures on purchased supplies
• Market the most money from what you grow
• Small Scale Focus

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Equipment

• Walking tractor / tiller 5500
• Wheel hoes 500
• One row seeder 100
• Soil block equipment 800
• Hoes and hand tools 400
• Carts and wheelbarrows 700
• 8000

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Additional Capital Investment

• Greenhouses 4500
• Irrigation 2000
• Undersowing seeder 500
• 7000

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Small Scale Math

• 15,000 paid back over 5 years with 10 interest
• Total cost per acre (with 5 acres) aprox. 800
• 1,200 per acre per year annual operating costs
  (Seeds, fertilizers, fuel, hired equipment,
  repairs)
• Total costs 2000 per acre
• Total income 8000 per acre
• 30,000 per year for 5 acres

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Planning on paper

• Determine for the whole year for each crop
• What resources are needed
• Where the resources will come from
• How they will be acquired
• How much time to allot for each task

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What to grow?

• Make a list of crops you want to grow
• Determine when crop is available in your region
• Consider season extension possibilities
• Availablity of major crops for sale handout

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Production Size

• How much land is available?
• How fertile is it?
• How many workers are involved?
• What kind of equipment is on hand?
• What kind of market demand is there?

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Layout Crop spacing

• 100 ft beds with 5-10 ft tractor turn around
  space at the end of each side
• 42 wide beds with 12 for pathways, 30 for
  growing space or 60 wide beds with 12 for
  pathways and 48 for crops
• Worms Eye View handout

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Other factors in planning

• Good seed
• Quantity
• When to plant
• Plan for successions

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Crop Rotations

• The practice of changing the crop each year on
  the same piece of ground.
• Ideally the 2 crops are
• Different botanically
• Do not make the same demands on the soil for
  nutrients
• Do not share the same diseases or insect pests

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Crop Rotations suggestions, hints refinements

• Legumes are generally beneficial preceding crops
• Onions, Lettuce and Squashes are generally
  beneficial preceding crops
• Potatoes yield better after corn
• For potatoes some preceding crops (peas, oats,
  barley) increase incidence of scab, whereas
  others (soybean) decrease it significantly
• Corn and Beans are not greatly influenced in any
  detrimental way by the preceding crop
• Adding Lime and Manure can reducing the negative
  impact of a preceding crop
• Onions are not helped when they follow a
  leguminous green manure
• Carrots, Beets and Cabbages are detrimental to
  subsequent crops

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Rotation example

• Squash
• Root Crops
• Beans
• Tomatoes
• Peas
• Brassicas
• Sweet Corn
• Potatoes

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Green Manures

• Protect against erosion
• Retain nutrients that might otherwise be leached
  from the soil
• Suppress germination and growth of weeds
• Cycle nutrients from the lower to upper layers of
  soil
• Legumes- add nitrogen to the soil for subsequent
  crops
• Add Organic Matter / Humus
• Deep roots can penetrate hardpan layers

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Green Manures Growing options

• Overwintering Green Manures
• Main Crop Green Manures
• Undersown Green Manures
• Usually planted either after the 4th of July or
  4-5 weeks after the main crop
• 3 cultivations / weedings are needed before under
  sowing
• Recommends drilling seeds with garden seeder

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Considerations for under sowing legumes

• Shade tolerance
• Ability to grow with the crop
• Effects including competition with this years
  crop
• Beneficial effects on next years crop
• Erosion control
• Winter hardiness
• Weed control (rapid growth and broad leaves are a
  plus)

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Which Green Manures for which crop?

• For Tall crops sweet clover, vetch, red clover
  or alsike clover
• For sod like cover dwarf white clover
• For resistance to foot traffic dwarf white
  clover or vetch
• Before potatoes soybeans or sweet clover
• Under corn soybeans, sweet or red clover
• Soil protection that winter kills spring oats,
  spring barley

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Which Green Manures for which crop? continued

• For the latest fall planting in cold climates
  rye or winter wheat
• Six weeks before first frost green manure mixes
  for late fall grazing
• Oats, Red clover, field peas and mustard
• Wheat, white clover, purple vetch and canola
• Rye, ladino clover, winter vetch, oil radish

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Green Manure considerations

• Timing
• Time of incorporation into the soil
• Rotational fit
• Feed value (with livestock)
• Beneficial insect habitat
• Cost

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Tillage Bed Prep

• Incorporating soil amendments
• Turning under green manures Crop residue
• Goals
• Loosen the soil
• Incorporate air, organic matter, amendments
• Remove weeds
• Tillage can be deep (up to 2ft) or shallow (3-6)

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Mold Board vs. Chisel Plow
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The Broadfork

• Breaks up compaction
• Provides soil aeration
• Aids the soil structure
• Improves drainage
• Extends crop rooting depth
• Increases range of soil nutrients available to
  plant roots
• Helps deepen the topsoil

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Shallow Tillage

• Rototillers mix the soil
• Spaders loosen the soil without inverting it

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Tithler
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Seeding (see handouts)

• Direct Seeding
• One Row Seeder
• Six Row Seeder
• Transplanting
• Hatfield Transplanter

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Weeds

• Wheel Hoe
• Flame Weeder

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