Over-the-shoulder harvesting bucket: Harvest hands-free and never bent over

Florists and consumers are seeking out local, seasonal flowers, and weekend shoppers at farmers markets find stalls stocked with flowers as well as produce. Meanwhile, many hometown brick and mortar flower shops are being forced to evolve and innovate as they face increasing competition from online companies and grocery floral departments, which have become one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry. While most chain stores still rely heavily on imported blooms, many are now actively seeking to source locally-grown flowers, providing new sales outlets for growers. One of the most widely requested items from floral departments is mixed bouquets. The key to making mixed or market bouquets profitable is planning and extreme efficiency.

This month’s submission is from Dogpatch Urban Gardens in Iowa and it’s a simple one – a grabber being used to reach Tomahooks obviating the need for a ladder. It’s quite possible that many of you have already thought of this, but I had never seen this before. I love the idea and I don’t even use hooks…but I might after seeing this.

Like all of you, I’m always trying to make little improvements around the farm, and I’m never finding enough time to try all of my ideas. Last year I had the opportunity to rebuild the packing area at Cully Neighborhood Farm (CNF) and to also build three prototype pieces of furniture for a new packing shed at the North Willamette Research and Education Center (NWREC) for their small demonstration farm and to try out some of my ideas.

Both of these farms were looking to create functional packing sheds with limited budgets, small spaces, and for very diverse vegetable production on a small scale. An additional challenge, common to many small farms, was limited water at both sites (about 10 gpm and 55 psi) and no access to electricity. Both farms commonly have just one person working in the pack shed at a time, but might have three or more during peak times.

Do you want to be able to heat your greenhouse with radiant heat? Are you interested in being able to heat your soil to extend your season or even grow through the winter? In this article we will examine how we built a hydronic radiant heat system for our greenhouse, and how you can do this at your farm.

A mile of gravel road crosses the Winooski River over an old covered bridge, leading to Cate Farm. On a beautiful clear bright summer day, the long and lanky Richard Wiswall saunters over to warmly welcome me. Even though it’s a Monday morning in July in Vermont, during what should be the busy season, he’s full of smiles and exudes warmth and ease. Instead of a stressed-out, disheveled grower, there is a composed and relaxed man greeting me.

How can he manage to be so comfortable, especially at this time of year? Because he’s a life-long professional grower who’s got his systems down, his team in place, and his priorities in alignment with his goals. He wants great crops, a healthy lifestyle, and to be a vital member of a vibrant community.

Like many farms, we have taken the paper pot plunge.

The paper pot system is a simple and efficient way to seed and transplant crops using paper chains that unravel through a non-motorized transplanting tool designed for one person to pull from a comfortable, upright position.

I began Neversink Farm six years ago. Building the farm that first year was incredibly hard work, but it was that early experience of struggle that shaped the foundations of how I would farm going forward. My wife and I managed to pull together $30K. With that, a dream, a lot of enthusiasm and not much else, we said goodbye to city life.

We leased a beautiful piece of land just a few hundred yards up the river from a cabin I had purchased years ago. The land had more rocks than dirt, no water, a barn and loads of quackgrass. Our initial purchases for the farm that first year were a small propagation house to start seedlings, a small simple hoop house in which to grow tomatoes, and a two-wheel tractor to till and plow the fields. We had a great desire to farm but lacked experience and knowledge in the craft.

Increased heat and an extended season are the most common reasons growers are drawn to growing in a greenhouse. But if you’re sitting on the fence, not sure if greenhouse growing is for you, there are many other good reasons, some of which are not obvious unless you’ve grown under cover before.

Most of the time when growers reach out to my consulting group, Greenhouse Vegetable Consultants, to help them decide whether to grow in a greenhouse, it has to do with looking at the costs and the return on investment (ROI). Inputs and capital expenses are high, so you have to know the market to see if it's worthwhile.

Our first year selling flowers at the farmers market, we sold straight bunches of sunflowers, zinnias, etc. Then I saw a vendor at market making beautiful wildflower bouquets (legitimately wildflowers from the side of the road), and people loved them. Having always been into art, we decided bouquet making was definitely going to become a part of what we offered. Last year, we made more than 14,000 bouquets for grocers and farmers markets.

Every year, early in the season, our crew watches an old video, Efficient Harvesting Techniques, made by CSA Works (Food Bank Farm) in Hadley, MA. It’s no longer available, sadly (Michael Docter says “We’ve retired from the film industry to do farming!”). The film has cult movie status with us, and old hands join in on key punch lines. It’s packed with good information. It took me many screenings before I no longer took away a new tip each time I watched. Much of what we have learned is from them. According to Vern Grubinger in his book Sustainable Vegetable Production from Start-Up to Market at Food Bank Farm, “On an average day, 5,000 pounds of produce is brought in by noon by five people working for seven hours each. That works out to nearly 145 pounds per hour per person.”

The difference between a dull tool and a sharp tool affects the speed and energy required to do a job as well as the quality of the final product. When harvesting, we make hundreds, if not thousands, of cuts a day with knives. Weeding, we drag hoes through miles of soil. Making those actions even a fraction easier, faster, and more effective adds up fast. Sharpening is something that is very easy to learn the basics of, but can take a little practice to get really good at.

Usually when garlic is ready to be harvested and dealt with, the farming year is in full swing, and bodies and brains are tired a lot of the time. We have made ourselves a checklist to help things go more smoothly, and make sure no important step gets forgotten. This also helps new crew know what they are supposed to be doing when and if they get confused.

Part 1 of this series discussed why and how to add cut flowers to your vegetable farm. This part discusses production in more detail, especially harvest and post-harvest handling. Part 3 will focus on marketing.

Growing cut flowers is similar in many ways to growing vegetables, particularly if you are working with annuals. But there are some important differences. I’ve learned a lot from adding flowers to my own farm, and I’m going to share some of it with you here.

Over the years garlic has been a small but stalwart crop on the CSA farms that I’ve worked on, and on my own farm. Compared to many other crops, it grows easily and reliably, is adaptable to a variety of techniques, provides harvestable parts all through the spring and, when cured and stored properly, can be sold all through the summer, fall and winter.

The body of knowledge about using hoophouses for cool-weather crops has grown each year, and the options are many. Each grower will want to customize the mixture of crops to suit the local climate, market, and desired work schedule. For example, our focus is on supplying a wide range of fresh produce all winter and spring to feed 100 people. If your goal is to maximize harvests in December, and then read novels by the woodstove till mid-February, you might rather plant a large amount of spinach to overwinter and harvest after your time off.