One of our farm goals this week is to get the garden beds behind the house and across the driveway ready for planting. We've designed these gardens with permanent raised beds that we maintain (mostly) with hand tools such as broadforks, cultivating hoes, shovels, and rakes. Whether you are growing on 80 acres, 1 acre, or on a patio, planning out the design of your garden so that it is integrated efficiently and enjoyably into your lifestyle is key to a sustained and successful farm or garden. During your time at the farm this week, we'll have you help us prepare these gardens for planting, talk about why we designed them the way we did, and help you think about design possibilities for different types of farms and gardens.
To get you thinking about farm and garden design before you arrive, please watch the following video by Jean-Martin Fortier, a market gardener in Quebec. He and his wife Maude-Helene Desroches make a living growing on an acre and a half of permanent raised beds. Fortier's book "The Market Gardener" has become a popular guide for farmers wanting to grow organically and intensively on a small acreage without large equipment:
The Market Gardener with Jean-Martin Fortier, Part 2 (18 min.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_8ZsRbCnxM
As a part of preparing our beds for planting, we'll be working with the soil to maintain good tilth and make sure that the seeds and seedlings we'll be planting in a few weeks have the nutrients they need to get off to a good growing start. In preparation for talking about developing and maintaining soil fertility in raised bed systems, please watch the following video, again from Jean-Martin Fortier:
The Market Gardener with Jean-Martin Fortier, Part 5 (16 min.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfrqK_Q3JGk
As we mentioned when we met on the farm last week, your learning in this course will be driven by your curiosity. To cultivate that curiosity, please come up with a question that you'd like to ask after watching the video segments above and type it into the comments section of the blog. We will have time on the farm for you to ask your questions--maybe we will even have some answers!
After watching both videos, I am curious about the utilization of hoop houses. I am from metro Detroit and have seen many hoop houses pop up in the last decade or so as a part of the urban agriculture movement. I am wondering if these have been found to be more beneficial in a city setting than having garden beds? It seems to me that it would take the same amount of land to have hoop houses as garden beds. Is there an advantage to hoop houses over garden beds? Does it depend on the type of land, or the type of soil?
ReplyDeleteWhat are the benefits of having raised beds opposed to just rows? Is it more efficient? If so, how?
ReplyDeleteWhat was the thought behind the organization of your farm?
I'm curious about granulated poultry manure. How it is different from mammal manure? Why does he recommend spreading it directly but not other manures?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching these videos, I have a new appreciation for farm design and technique. As someone who is working towards being an urban planner, I made many connections to particular details of design (foot traffic, grouping, overall layout, standardized length). Some questions I have: what kind of planning processes go into preparing farms in an urban space? How can we make designs that are resilient to climate chaos? What are different types of microbial ecosystems that exist in different soils around the country/world? What does a comprehensive composting curriculum look like for those that don't/those that live in the urban space?
ReplyDeleteIn the second composting video, Jean-Martin mentions that the goal for his farm is to "replace mechanical tillage with biological tillage." One way he accomplishes this is by harnessing the abilities of earthworms to transform organic matter into humus. What are some other ways that small-scale farmers may utilize biological tillage instead of mechanical tillage? Would these strategies be beneficial for industrial farmers as well, and how could they be persuaded to balance profit/efficiency with "ecological integrity?"
ReplyDeleteWhat are the advantages of using raised beds rather than other farming or gardening methods? Can this change depending on different climate conditions? For example, if your farm was in a more consistently warmer climate would you reconsider using raised beds in favor of another farming method?
ReplyDeleteJean-Martin mentions many times that the raised beds are permanent, but they do not appear to have any structure preventing erosion. What sort of maintenance is required to ensure the permanency of the raised beds? Was the soil profile he mentioned in the second video a result of soil accruing each year in the beds? If so, do the grow plots continue to rise above the base elevation of the landscape?
ReplyDeleteJean-Martin discussed the way in which his crop rotation takes both botanical families and feeding needs of plants into consideration. Is this different for a CSA, where customers may prefer certain crops over others and so plots for some might ideally be larger than those for others? Are plants within the same 'botanical family' more or less interchangeable when considering nutrients that they put into and take out of the soil?
ReplyDeleteJean-Martin brought a lot of insight to the process of creating and maintaining raised bed as well as the importance of compost and the benefits it has on soil. As he was talking about the raised beds it seemed there were very specific measurements used based on "what we had" in the past i terms of tools. Could differently scaled raised beds be created based on the measurements of more modern tools? Also are their people solely dedicates to profuding quality compost for sale?
ReplyDeleteThe questions that I have in reference to the above videos are as follows. 1) what advantages do raised beds offer over regular rows? 2) in terms of farm organization, what were your thoughts when you came up with the layout for your farm?
ReplyDelete