Sustainability on Steroids: Organic Farmer Grosses $100K an Acre

[DeepseekerADS]

Making Bordeaux Spray = Fungicide for grapes and fruit trees



I posted this video here for future reference.

 

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[DeepseekerADS]

How to take cuttings from grapes

http://gardenofeaden.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-take-cuttings-from-grape-vines.html

I needed these

 

[DeepseekerADS]

A point to ponder.... Anyone with ideas on this?

When panning for gold I come up with a whole lot more black sand than I do gold.

I'll study this, an initial search doesn't show me anything.

Might be interesting if I can find a use for it in my gardens!

 

[FC-Treasure]

Great thread. FYI, here is Paul Kaiser's website: About Us If you watch the video you can see the quality of his soil, which is very impressive. I'm unclear how he gets enough compost to do 8 acres? Maybe he is collecting from other businesses? My father gardens in a similar manner, e.g. with black plastic coverings, no weeding, low watering. My dad goes to local farms and gets a truckload of aged manure every year and spreads it. My father's garden productivity is very impressive as well. He basically grows enough in a fairly small garden to feed himself and maybe 3-4 other families. e.g. supplying enough tomatoes, squash, okra, green beans, turnip greens, kale, spinach, etc. In the winter, he grows exclusively greens and he runs a free "you pick um" type of thing for his friends.

I tried raised bed gardens in Austin Texas and had good production, but I had to water like crazy (my raised beds dried out too quickly in the hot dry Texas weather) and fertilize heavily with chicken manure. I had issues with not enough pollinating insects, which definitely reduced my yield in stuff like cucumbers. I used to walk out and count the bees, lots of bees meant lots of cucumbers.

Oh, one other thing my dad has, a solar powered electric fence. Pretty critical to keep the deer out, otherwise he would have nothing in his garden.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Welcome FC, you'll have treasure of info here! I have my posts and fencing, and was real keen on getting solar powered electric fencing to keep the deer out. A week or so ago with our heavy snow, the deer tracks led right up to my infancy stage compost pile. I'd thrown my grandmother's maybe 50 year old canned food onto the pile. Let's just say the deer needed those nutrients! Hope it didn't kill any of them!

I don't like bees, they hurt my delicate body when they feel threatened, but I am considering starting a hive. I saw only one honeybee when the weather was warmer. When I was a child on this farm, got stung a bunch of times. You might wish to look into our homesteading thread here on Survival Tips.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Great thread. FYI, here is Paul Kaiser's website: About Us

I look forward to this link. There's only an intro video there right now, but he promises updates the middle of March = coming soon I hope. I'm really excited about finding out how he built his soil. As is, I can only guess layer after layers of compost and mulch. But, just maybe, he'll tell us more.

Edit: I'm still looking at his site, reading articles from SFF In The News section.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

I've been studying Paul Kaiser's farm and his methods, and just how to get my soil just like his. I still have much further to go, but I think the following article better explains his methods to me:

The Drought Fighter - Craftsmanship Magazine

I also note that he does not use the typical types of raised beds - boxing them in. He does rows of essentially raised beds, with paths between the rows. Looks like they're about two feet wide looking at this picture:



It also appears that he does practice strictly soil spacing, such that in say a two foot square of that row, he could plant 64 carrots just like the Square Foot gardening method.

These are thoughts to ponder, and I could make better use of the scrap lumber laying around this farm. I need a woodshed, to restore the chicken house, and I need outbuildings....

Studying leads to ideas.... In this case, thank heavens for the Internet

 

[FC-Treasure]

great article. I saw the answer to my compost question, he does outsource in a big way:

To some people, what matters is the process of producing compost in commercial quantities, which burns tons of fossil fuels. In Kaiser’s case, his compost requirements are so high that his own farm can only generate about a third of what he needs. The rest comes from his Sonoma County neighbors; when food scraps and yard waste arrive at the local dump, enormous, diesel-fueled machines put them through 15 different stages of separation, cleaning, grinding, and aeration in order to create new soil–which it pumps out at the rate of 150 tons a day.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

great article. I saw the answer to my compost question, he does outsource in a big way:

Yes he does, and I'm having a very hard time finding bulk compost for my beds. Still pressing on with that. I've grown so frustrated with the pile I started that this morning I took one of the 4 food quality plastic drums I'd picked up, and started a new compost endeavor - saw dust, leaves, table scraps, and the last two of my grandmothers canning jars, and just a tad of water. In today's heat (finally), about 6 hours later I lifted the lid to show my cousin, and wow at the temperature inside. Certainly it's not cooking yet, but I could see it was a good idea.

I'd picked up the drums off Craigslist a couple months ago because I knew I would need them - but didn't know where. I'll be looking to pick up more of them. I can't remember correctly, but think they were 40 or 45 gallon drums.

 

[FC-Treasure]

So, my dad was interested in this article and decided to try it out. He is usually a "till" and use "black plastic" guy, but this year he decided to go no-till and just hoe a small trench for seed. Now, he has 15-20 years worth of cow manure worked into this garden, so the soil is already uber rich and easy to turn with little compaction. He was troubled by the lack of worms though and hopes this new technique results in greater worm populations. To keep the weeds down he used grass clippings from his huge lawn, piled in mounds over newspaper around the seedlings.

So far the results have been extremely promising. His corn crop was the best ever with several small rows yielding about 200 sizable ears which he vacuum sealed and put in his freezer. We did have some deer damage but we were able to keep the raccoons out with a low level electric fence. (the deer were jumping over the top because we had the wires set too low in order to discourage the raccoons which have devastated corn crops in the past years).

I think Dad is going to expand on this technique while also applying more cow manure and grass clippings each year. I should point out that he has a source for cow manure that has been composting for several years.

 

[pepperj]

Very interesting and great thread and there's so much to read in the links that now time is the issue in getting through it all. Started a new garden this year at the place, as it was a horse corral 12+ yrs ago and just go, so it turned into a Sumac bush. This took some doing, cutting down 250+ small trees and ploughingx4 up the stumpage and roots then tilling up the remainder so now I have a pretty good space to start something. Planted the first garden with some manure that was 20+ yrs old being the youngest to 50yrs old and just layer down enough for the seed rows. Germination of the seed was mixed as it rained almost everyday it seemed for the first month and most rotted so I'm not overly happy with the results. I have 4 - 6 ton trailers of this manure and was thinking of really putting on a thick layer and working it into the clay soil for a good start for the next season. I have enough timbers in now to prep the wood with a pine tar/linseed oil treatment to help the preserving from wood rot. For the next year plan is to have a few 24" raised bed boxes as well as the raised beds in the garden. I'm going to look at the local Lowes to see if the testing meter is available as I see it'll come in handy.