Farmin in the fall | Week 3

Week 3

The assigned readings for this week were Steel in the Field and the articles on weed management. The articles on weed management were fantastic reads and good resources I have downloaded and will be keeping handy for the years to come. It placed more of an emphasis on a personalized weed management plan compared to traditional one all be all fixes that I've found generally do not work. There's more to weed management than just weeding your beds or going with plasticulture. A repeated emphasis was placed on knowing your weeds. It's important to know what kind of weeds you are dealing with and how those plants live. It discussed a tilled fallow bed with intent on cultivating the seed bed for weeds and then killing them all with tools and you repeat this process to cut away at the weed seed bank. To me, this seems like a good strategy and possibly even use the flame weeder for easy killing while helping to provide “free” organic matter back into the soil. I know generally you've told me we don't place the weeds in the good compost pile so I was thinking burning right in bed and tilling in could keep the good parts while eliminating the reasons we don’t compost it? Another topic they discussed was planned rotation in regards to difficulty in cultivation. A case study found that 4-5 ft tall pigweed had released about 12k seeds into the seed bank. They followed up the bed with a fall cabbage that was easy to cultivate and could keep pigweed at bay easily and at the end of the season the seed bank had been reduced to 3k about a ¼ of what it was before. This seems like another reason where cover crops could also come in handy. In theory, if combating the seed bank successfully over a significant number of years the bank could potentially be drained and emptied of any significant weed seeds to where issues are significantly reduced. This is something I plan on experimenting with on my farm over the course of a lifetime. Who knows maybe after I toil in the sun for 50 years my kids and grandkids can have weed free beds.
This week we were finally relieved from our grueling labor on the greenhouse. We finally got to experience some actual farming! For this week we got to plant in the beds that Todd prepared for us. I had talked to Todd earlier during class about coming out and preparing some beds in the spring since there’s none left to prepare and that’s something I feel like I’m lacking and also is a pretty important skill. He has said it I can come out and learn to switch the implements and then actually get some hands on practice using the tractor. I understand it’s difficult with so many students and the fact that it is Todd’s job but I feel he does a lot of the important work and I would rather get some opportunities to try and do it myself. I have realized you have to go after what you want in life especially in school with this degree. I don’t mean it to be offensive so hope it doesn’t come off negatively but I will try and take the lead as much as I can to build experience that I feel is valuable and worth my time.
To finish off the day we sort of split up into two teams to get the brassicas planted. I am very excited about how it went in and am hoping for a good fall crop. I can already smell the Brussels roasting now. Planting the baby transplants is one of my favorite parts of farming. I always feel so productive after a good day of planting crops.

Jordan Palmer

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