Market Farming

[Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>]

Barbara

I use leaves.  I have plenty of baled hay but it introduces weed seeds so I avoid it, plus we still have a wonky hay market right now around here and its at premium price still.  I have a lawn care service that mows for me in return for permission to dump.  When they dump leaves I simply go down and use a brush attachment on my Bobcat and load the leaves onto my dump bed.  This year I am only growing about 700 heads of garlic.  The stiff neck and early varieties have already broken the ground and have shoots up (we planted the first full week in November).

The leaves seem to do well, especially if they are mulched up a bit into smaller pieces.  This is my second year using the leaves and I am quite happy with them.  The one problem with whole leaves is keeping them in place during high winds.

The leaves I use are a mix of Oak, Maple, and Tulip.

Straw this year is running around 5.00 a bale.  Good hay is a bit more.  We bale right around 6K bales each year and use them solely for our boarding operation.

Hope that helps.

Richard Stewart

Carriage House Farm

North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1848

(513) 967-1106

http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com

rstewart AT zoomtown.com

On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:58 PM, Barbara Dieckman wrote:

I actually am interested in your using leaves as they are plentiful for me. I know most of the market farmers that grow garlic here use straw, but it is $$ and the leaves are already here. Do you have good luck with the leaves and how much do you put on?

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Richard Robinson <rrobinson AT nasw.org> wrote:

My garlic is all mulched with bagged leaves, but I wonder how others do this, especially those of you who grow a hundred feet or more of row. And do large-scale commercial garlic farmers mulch, or do they grow where the ground never freezes?

Richard, curious in the zone 5/6 rural suburbs of Boston

 --
 Richard Robinson
 http://www.nasw.org/users/rrobinson/

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