Soil Health

Organic growers are increasingly choosing to grow year-round in high tunnels, in part to avoid the diseases encountered by field crops. Not only do high tunnels provide physical exclusion from airborne disease, but the environmental conditions necessary for the presence of many disease pathogens simply do not occur in high tunnel production. Of course disease is not eliminated entirely in...

I first heard the old adage of “no bare ground” while working for Gordon Tooley and Margaret Yancy at Tooley’s Trees in Truchas, New Mexico.  Gordon espouses many philosophies on life and farming.  However, the philosophy of “no bare ground” didn’t completely resonate with me in dry-land New Mexico.  Not long after I started on the Seed Production Farm at...

Kathy Ciarimboli is a Sales Associate and Special Projects assistant at High Mowing Organic Seeds. She and her husband homestead on several acres in rural Vermont. Before working for High Mowing, she was the farm manager for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Palmer, Alaska. When I got the soil test results back in early April, I started doubting...

Good early season weed control. This morning I got an email from a dear friend who is farming for the first year on new land. With no time for her usual warmth, she simply wrote: Drowning in hand weeding and can't keep up. Tool bar I got this year isn't really working on my International Harvester. Do you think this...

The second week in September has brought with it a chill reminiscent of October. While most of us are all still busy harvesting and processing the fruits of our labor, now is also the time to begin thinking of fall soil amendments. In the fall, after you have removed plants from the soil is a great time to add nutrients...

Got inoculants? If you’re on your second or third succession planting of beans or anticipating a fall planting of peas, it may be important for you to think about using inoculants in your garden or field. Why use inoculants?  Inoculants help to maximize plant growth and yields by increasing the number of naturally occurring Rhizobia bacteria in the soil directly...

Cover cropping and green manuring are good gardening practices for a number of reasons: they improve soil structure and fertility, increase organic matter, loosen compacted soils, reduce weeds, control erosion, and attract pollinating insects.  Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, generally speaking, green manures are tilled into the soil while they are still green and growing, while cover...