Blog Post #1 How will I grow my seed?
The farm produces naturally grown vegetables, and fruit. And has been saving a wide selection of seed, for its own use, and to sell to the Salt Spring Seed company for many years. Along with being a farm, it is a retreat business and a community of 25 people.
The farm is located on 120 acres, and includes forest, orchard, perennial gardens, and a 2.5 acre market garden which is composed of four hoop houses, and fields of various sizes, with varying degrees of slope and growing conditions- which makes crop and seed planning quite the task.
10 acres of the farm is enclosed in deer fencing, and includes many 'wild' areas for the birds, snakes etc.
Salt Spring Island is a cool Mediterranean climate, in growing zone 9a.
It rains for most of the fall and winter, but only receives around 35 inches of rain a year.
Drought has increasingly become a concern in the area.
The island gets over 2000 hrs. of sunlight per year, making it a great place to grown in coastal BC.
The farm has transitioned from rocky pasture, to nice loam soil after many years of adding lots of organic matter.
In the past three years the farm moved away from heavy tillage, and now only uses the tractor for opening up new areas, and the potato harvest.
We grow in permanent raised beds, that are maintained with hand tools, and appropriate technology to prepare the soil for planting (power harrow, flail mower etc. on a BCs).
Two years ago the farm dropped its organic certification, after being certified since 1992.
The farm still adheres to organic practices, but found that dropping the certification allowed for more flexibility in using animals( who ate local natural feed, but not certified organic) to rotate the fields.
All produce is sold onsite, which allows our customers to see for themselves how the produce is grown.
I stepped into the role of head farmer a year and half ago, and realized the seed saving aspect of production had become a little loose after a few transitions of farmers.
Through this course I hope to gain a stronger understanding of seed crop management, at the same time as managing our annual market garden.
I will continue to grow using organic practices, and learning from the land itself the best way to work with it.
It was very prolific, and produced a lot of spikey green melons... that never fully ripened, and left a lot of people wondering what they were doing in the greenhouse?
This is a good example of the importance of doing research on climate zones, growing conditions, market value etc. before deciding to grow something that will take up valuable greenhouse space, and could be potentially very dangerous. ( we found that the kids liked to throw the green spiked balls).
Cucumis metuliferus, horned melon
native to Africa.
Hi Meghan; Hilarious story about the melons and the kids. And you're right, the lesson was to plan well what grows in premium greenhouse space! Still, as a plant lover, I can understand the temptation to plant a full row of something and just go for it. Stowel Lake Farm sounds amazing, even more so than I realized. I'm looking forward to reading your blog posts and seeing pictures.
ReplyDeleteWith the move to BCS-based tillage and handwork do you feel you will have good weed control in your seed crops? The farm may already have this worked out since seed growing is a long-established practice there, but it does sound like the transition away from tractors is relatively recent, so it may throw some of the production systems into unanticipated challenges. Maybe you can use this course as a way to address any that pertain to the growing of great quality seeds. Or, maybe the move away from tractor work has solved some problems, or improved things for the seed production? I'd be curious to know your analysis of it.
Anyways, thanks for the intro blog, we'll communicate more as the course goes on.
all the best, Patrick.
Hi Meghan - welcome to the course! I look forward to reading your blogs, particularly since you will using your real world seed plan. We had someone do that last year and she indicated that it was incredibly helpful to do so.
ReplyDeleteLike Patrick, I wonder how much of a challenge it will be to manually maintain your seed crops but I guess it really depends on the size of your various seed crops. Besides, the farm already has 3 years under its belt of doing so.
With near drought conditions in the summer and wet conditions in the fall, that presents quite a challenge for growing and maturing seed crops! I'm looking forward to seeing what crops you grow for seed and how you manage that particular environment.
Regards,
Mary