Simple salad harvester and wooden bed shaper: #toolsforgrowingformarket
Post your farm-made tool on Instagram or Facebook with #toolsforgrowingformarket. If author Josh Volk picks your tool, you win a $50 tool gift certificate and a Full Access subscription to GFM. Two simple modifications to common farm tools caught my eye with the #toolsforgrowingformarket hashtag this month: A salad harvester made from a set of […]
Planting and greensprouting potatoes
Potatoes are a rewarding crop to grow, with a lot more flexibility about planting dates than the traditional instruction to plant on St. Patrick’s Day might have you believe. Planting dates and temperaturesPotatoes are a cool-weather crop, but the tops are not frost tolerant. A good guideline for suitable spring planting conditions is three consecutive […]
Favorite flowers from 2021
Last year when we did multiple sets of trials, it was fun to see all the new varieties, but also hard to keep track of all of it. Taking photos through the season helps me to remember along with a Crop Planning note in our Evernote (an app for note-taking and organizing) that I share […]
The 3-point pallet fork: How did we ever get along without it?
There are amazingly diverse uses for a very cheap tractor implement for those without front-end-loaders or forklifts. You know those moments when you look at a piece of equipment and wonder why you ever went without it? In just a little over a year, the 3-point pallet fork has become that tool for us. You […]
Plan for alliums all year-round
Different members of the onion family for different seasons It is the heart of allium appreciation season here on our farm. Those cute little buggers start out looking like blades of grass and end up filling crates in the storage rooms and walk-in coolers, giving meals all winter a savory delicious flavor. No dish would […]
A farmers guide to politics
How and why to get involved locally When my husband Casey and I first became interested in farming as a career in the early 2000s, we were also young voters who had become disillusioned with electoral politics. In spite of our youthful idealism and desire to contribute, our first significant campaigning and voting experience (the […]
How to charge biochar for more resilient soil
The impacts of climate chaos on Astarte Farm have forced us to look for solutions that provide increased long-term resilience in our soil systems, and biochar has shown good promise in moving us toward that goal. Biochar is a paradoxical substance. It is both an ancient agricultural practice developed thousands of years ago in the […]
Early season income with ranunculus and anemones part II
Growing, harvesting, postharvest handling, and saving corms This is the second article in a two-part series on growing anemones and ranunculus. The first, which ran in the September 2021 GFM, covers ordering corms, soaking, pre-sprouting, and transplanting. This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Growing for Market Magazine. Growing your plantsOnce anemones and […]
Tips for selling produce online
This article originally appeared in the March 2021 issue of Growing for Market Magazine. Selling produce online has become commonplace as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. After all, it limits person-to-person interactions; exposes a host of potential new customers to fresh, healthy and safe food; and it gives farmers a much needed outlet when […]
An Introduction to Korean Natural Farming
For years I have been hearing the term “IMO,” though it wasn’t until this past year when I started to see an increasing number of market gardeners talking about these IMOs that I began digging in. I quickly found myself buried in a heap of acronyms, yet captivated by an exciting new approach to soil […]