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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: maroc AT islandnet.com (Maroc)
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: succession planting
  • Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 14:25:54 +0000


That's mighty good advice from Bill MacKay. I'd like to add emphasis to
one point he made. Use transplants. If you haven't been doing it it may
seem time-consuming and labour-intensive, but it pays off. First, as Bill
notes, you have every plant exactly where it can perform best. More
importantly you get 100 percent success, all healthy, producing plants.

Another important point Bill makes, don't try to get all the product you
can off a planting. I've got snow peas started in an unheated greenhouse.
They are three inches out of the ground and I've planted the second batch.
When I pull the first planting they will still be loaded with peas and
flowers but the sweetest, most tender will be gone and the second planting
will be close to picking. Then I'll plant cantaloup (I like the new plants
to get lots of heat, so I wait until later than really necessary).

Water, one of the essentials. I use a low-pressure drip system. At one
time it was automatic but I found I was losing one of the features of this
kind of irrigation - low water consumption. Now it is much more manual.
I've increased the number of zones to give better selective control to
different crops (easy easy to change configurations each year as you rotate
crops). Watch the sky, watch the humidity, watch you soil, watch your
plants. Beware of extended grey periods (cloudy) without rain, such as we
have on the westcoast of Canada. You may be fooled into thinking your
plants don't need water when, in truth, their tongues are hanging out.

Thanks again Bill for the good advice,
Don Maroc
Vancouver Island, Canada






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