Winter Task List
Winter is a time for maintenance on many levels. Self-care, cleaning and restoring tools, fixing up infrastructure, mucking stalls, perfecting your crop rotation and planting schedule, studying up on...
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April Harvesting Along with March, April is often-times referred to as the Hunger Gap. This is the time in the PNW when our winter stocks of squash and onions have run out, we have harvested the last...
View ArticleSummer Task List
July Harvest From the field: peas, lettuce, mustard greens, chard, kale, cabbage, beets, carrots, salad turnip, salad radish, fennel, edible flowers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash,...
View ArticleFall Task List
Fall is a transitional time, meant to chase us out of the fields and slow down the constant intensity of planting, harvest, rotation, and irrigation. The rains return, and when we find a moment between...
View ArticleManaging nutrients for soil health
Some of us from Concentrates were recently at a public workshop with Dan Sullivan and Nick Andrews from OSU, about nutrient management for organic farmers. It helped us dial-in some of our soil test...
View ArticlePhosphorus and the Spoils of War
Image: Greg Westfall (https://www.flickr.com/photos/imagesbywestfall/5855284480) Phosphorus can be a limiting factor in crop yield here in the Pacific Northwest, as in agriculture globally. But OSU is...
View ArticleSilicon, silica, silicate, soil health
Photos from Rutgers of crops raised with calcium silicate vs calcium carbonate. Note the powdery mildew on the vine raised with calcium carbonate. Silicon. It probably doesn’t show up on your soil...
View ArticleA Review of Michael Phillips’ Literature on Pure Neem Oil in Orchard Sprays
Phillips, Michael. The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way. Chelsea Green, 2013. Recently, there has been discussion between the benefits of using neem-derived insecticides...
View ArticleFruit Tree Care: Summer
Here we are in the heat of Summer with Autumn beckoning to us from just around the corner. The blossoms of Spring have fallen and are long gone, trees are flushed with new verdant growth, and hopefully...
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