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  • From: Michael Peck <silverandsienna AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Transition to Organic
  • Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 09:58:20 -0400

Does anyone know of an Organic Seed Supply in South Central Michigan?

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Johnathan Avery
Yelenick<yelenick AT riseup.net> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> Sounds like if you are going to try and farm next year you are going have
> a quite a time with the weeds.  My recommendation is definitely do NOT try
> to farm unless you have some sort of mechanical cultivator; tine weeder or
> sweeps.  You will be overwhelmed if you don't have those mechanical
> resources. It would be better just to put in some cover to build soil in
> the fall-winter-early spring, mow or disc the rye in the spring, and then
> to deplete the soil seed bank by clean cultivating with discs or harrows
> throughout the season. This will deplete soil organic matter, but it's
> probably worth the trade-off to take out the weeds. Add LOTS of compost
> (20 tons/acre) in the fall when you reseed a cover to build organic matter
> soil reserves.  Check out the book Sustainable Vegetable Production From
> Start-Up to Market by V. Grubinger and read about cover crops and
> cultivation in particular.
>
> I would recommend planting rye this fall '09 and clean cultivating next
> season '10 just to deplete the soil weed seed bank. Put in rye or winter
> killed oats with some winter kill nitrogen fixer like peas in the fall of
> '10 and do cash crops in '11. You can expand this rotation of clean
> cultivated fallow to late season cover crop (on the same acrage) to cash
> crop (on the same acreage) the next season; expanding upon this theme to
> more acreage as you go.
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:11:49 -0400
> From: Michael Peck <silverandsienna AT gmail.com>
> Subject: [Market-farming] Transition to Organic
> To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID:
>        <4c702a8d0908190711m448d172bna61282adb2581657 AT mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I'm going to be farming a few acres of family land beginning next spring in
> South Central Michigan.  For the last few years it has been in corn/oats or
> soybeans.  It was not farmed organically.  This year it was not cultivated
> at all, so there is a fairly thick mat of mixed grasses and weeds.  I will
> be planting some large areas of corn, potatoes and sunflowers, and mixed
> vegetables for market.
>
> What steps should I take to prepare the soil now?  I'd like to get a cover
> crop in since I have the time now.  What recommendations do you have for
> timing, crops to plant, cultivation schedule, etc.
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Michael
> Marshall MI  Zone 5b    -10  thru -15 F
>
>
> "If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your
> food comes from the grocery store then you are going to defend to the
> death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on
> that; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that
> your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death
> because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have
> become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it
> has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and
> it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it."
> — Derrick Jensen
>
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>




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