Week 3 on the Farm 2016: More About Microbes, Soil, and Seeds!

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, 47 degrees F, partly cloudy; Wednesday, 55 degrees F, afternoon sun.

It looks like we're going to get Spring back this week--hooray! The big question is when the soil will dry and warm enough so that we can begin working the garden beds. My guess is that won't happen before Tuesday. That's okay, though, since it will give me a chance to let you Tuesday folks play around with seed starting and vermicompost.

If you didn't yet watch the vermicompost video I posted last week, here it is again: http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/vermicompost.htm.

And here's a nice overview of factors to consider when starting seeds indoors (you can develop your own version of their "garden planner"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWCIaydwM_w&nohtml5=False.

Wednesday people, we'll have to see what the weather does to us. If it's dry enough, we may be able to start working up garden beds. If not, we may spend some of our afternoon in the orchard. We'll talk a bit about how managing perennial crops like fruit takes a slightly different approach than managing annual vegetables.

We're currently transitioning the orchard from a non-organic to an organic management system. As we're working this transition, can you guess one part of the orchard we're paying special attention to?

You're right, it's the soil!! And can you guess what part of the soil we're especially concerned about?

If you guessed "microbes," then you've been paying attention the past couple of weeks. Here are a couple of 5 minute videos by organic orchardist and educator Micheal Phillips that describe the sort of soil biology we are trying to foster on the orchard floor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-zi-6YrIE&nohtml5=False

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJugfnZWhVY&nohtml5=False

We'll have you help us with a project we're working on to help nurture those good fungi that Phillips talks about.

Finally, here's a link to an abbreviated interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer that I think many of you will enjoy given our conversation on campus last week. In it, she talks a bit about the intersections of science and traditional ecological knowledge:  http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/484/two_ways_of_knowing. I hope we can talk some more about this over the next two months.

We'll see you soon!