More Than Mint All About Compost. A toprate scientist asks the question Is organically grown food really more nutritious? _Growing vegetables west of the Cascades. http://more-than-mint.kategilby.co.uk/compost/bibliography.shtml
Extractions: Air Classics Art Culinaire Ask CPSC Monitor ... View all titles in this topic Hot New Articles by Topic Automotive Sports Top Articles Ever by Topic Automotive Sports Two-Season Garden Calendar - planting, fertilizing, pest control, and maintenance tips are given for the five areas of the country Sunset Spring, 1997 * In the low desert, you can still sow beans and cucumbers before midmonth; set out eggplant, okra, peanut, and squash transplants all month, plus sweet potato tubers. In the intermediate desert, sow beans, cucumbers, melons, okra, soybeans, and squash; set out seedlings of cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, squash, and tomatoes; plant sweet potato tubers. * In the high desert, finish sowing cool-season vegetables; later in the month, sow warm-season crops.
CSANR: Biologically Intensive & Organic Agriculture Yet, for decades, those who wanted to learn how to grow organically have had few come from people living and working on the west side of the Cascades. http://csanr.wsu.edu/Organic/TeachingFarmTukeyOrchard.htm
Extractions: Washington State University WSU has a strong track record in organic agriculture research work , says John Reganold, the WSU professor who has spearheaded the plan for both the organic agriculture major and the Tukey Orchard farm. More Perillo points out that, as the organic industry grows, so does the need for people knowledgeable about the practice to fill support roles in areas like community partnership development and marketing. The program can help fill that need as well. The department offers the Practicum in Organic Agriculture, as the field-based class at the farm is called, for credit to registered WSU students, or on a continuing education basis for gardeners or farmers who just want the experience in integrated organic growing techniques. Last year, the first that the farm was in operation, there was little time to promote the class. The handful of students that participated gained in-depth experience in running an organic farm through the height of the growing season. That included selling the produce and flowers through a system known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), in which customers buy a share and receive weekly deliveries of produce. With a head-start on planning this year, Jaeckel expects to have more students, more CSA subscribers and more business partnerships on campus and in the community. He plans to provide produce to the culinary arts school for teaching and for catering events, as well as to the campus dining service, which buys grains locally, but until now, has purchased produce through large suppliers. Jaeckel also intends to continue growing dye plants such as indigo and madder for the textile school, a service that Colen-Peck began last year.
Extractions: Quick Links Apply to Evergreen About Evergreen Inside Evergreen Pick Your Program Admissions Alumni Bookstore Campus Calendar Campus Life Campus Tour Catalog Directories Employment Enrollment Services Financial Aid Gateway Giving Graduate Studies Registration Public Service Centers Scholarships Studies Site Index The Center for Ecological Living and Learning Organic Farm Community Garden Farm House Comspost Facility ... Demeter's Garden Friends of the Farm CELL literature Faculty and Staff Collaborations Academics ... Contact the CELL Biodiesel Tomato Breeding Plant Chemistry Leachate Analysis ... Community Garden Additions Agriculture Links Below you'll find the current list of agricultural links regarding sustainable agricultural practices in Western Washington. This list grows almost daily, so continie to check back often to learn more as we find it! Jump to
P-Patch Vegetable Gardening For Fun And Profit Most people when considering vegetable gardening would assume that the garden (from his rather complex and wordy book, Gardening west of the Cascades). http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/ppatch.html
Extractions: (Thomas Jefferson) Rebecca comes from a long and distinguished farming tradition, but is by inclination and personal experience primarily a horticulturist and ornamental gardener. Michael formerly did his best to avoid getting his hands dirty in the garden. Nevertheless, we have joined forces together in recent years in a P-Patch located in Magnuson Park in Seattle for the specific purpose of raising vegetables. Michael came only lately to gardening, and like the newly converted offers an especially opinionated if limited point of view. The term "P-Patch" refers to an urban communal public site providing small leased plots for individuals to raise plants, most commonly vegetables. It is a term that is not listed in most dictionaries and the origin of the term is unclear to meperhaps it derives from Pea Patch, Produce Patch, or Public Patch. Looking over the Web, the term appears to be used primarily in Seattle. Most people when considering vegetable gardening would assume that the garden should be on their own property. This certainly has significant advantages in terms of convenience, freedom, and security regarding theft of produce. However, we have come to appreciate that a publicly located P-Patch offers a special atmosphere and advantages not found on private landthese tend to overshadow the disadvantages. In particular, besides providing shared and communal resources such as tools and compost, it allows a great deal of social interaction with fellow gardeners and casual passersby. There are also volunteer aspects such as contributing to the Food Bank for the needy which add appeal for civic-minded participants.
Quindalup Situated about three hours drive west of Sydney in NSW, Quindalup is close The market for organically grown food is Growing at more than 25% a year and http://www.quindalup.com/webcontent16.htm
Extractions: A New Permaculture Enterprise Mentoring Programme Opens Up A World of Opportunities at Quindalup Permaculture Farm and Education Centre Mentoring has long been recognised as a way of fostering talent in the business world. A mentor is someone who can make suggestions and show you alternatives you may not have thought of before. Mentoring gives you the opportunity to tap into a wealth of experience and knowledge that you may not yet have. A mentor often helps you to come up with a solution you may not have seen before or may alert you to possibilities which you had not recognised. To encourage young entrepreneurs, the business world also supports incubator programmes. In the same way that incubators are used to hatch new life, business incubator programmes are intended to breathe life into projects that need support by way of funding, management support or planning. A unique new support programme is being trialed at the Quindalup Permaculture Farm to support permaculture practitioners with an entrepreneurial flair to establish their own enterprises on the farm.
CSANR: SARE Program At WSU Farming west of the Cascades. Another program organized by the FFCT is an Traditional fruit and vegetable growers have converted their farms to fresh http://csanr.wsu.edu/SARE/2001-02/albuquerque2002Report.htm
Extractions: I attended the entire 3 rd National Small Farm Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I gave a poster presentation entitled: " Horticultural Outreach for Urban Fringe in the Pacific Northwest ". This work represents a summary of the outreach work I have been involved in over the last 10 years in working with both established, as well as prospective farmers. The following is a short summary of the salient points presented on my poster: As result of the Growth Management Act of 1990, the Washington State legislature passed an ag-land preservation law designed set the stage for urban planning, and rural land preservation. Using principals of Smart Growth (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) Washington counties are required to big dense urban development served by public transportation, build affordable housing, and preserve open space, ag-land, and critical environmental areas. Presently Washington State produces over 200 different food, feed, and seed crops. The crops showing the greatest returns at the present time include ornamentals, Christmas trees, and anything sold fresh at a roadside stand or Farmer's Market. While direct sales are doing very well, traditional wholesale processing crops such as berries, and vegetables are suffering from high levels of import from counties that have labor rates one-tenth of those in the United States. The following list includes the "bright spots" in western WA agriculture:
Untitled Document New growers should seriously consider contracting out the preparation of their beds. Many counties in areas west of the Cascades have initiated burning http://clark.wsu.edu/horticulture/Ginseng/Chpt03/prep.html
Extractions: T he previous chapter ( Chapter 2: Site Selection ) reviewed the most important factors that should be considered prior to seeding a new ginseng garden. Briefly, these include the selection of a well-drained loam soil, on a fairly level site. The prospective planting site should be carefully walked and any areas of questionable drainage have been flagged. The soils on the site have been reviewed by reading the description contained within a Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Survey map. (link to NRCS web site) Start with best site Some of the best sites for cultivated ginseng in the Northwest are ones that have been in either small grain or alfalfa cultivation. These fields don't have trees or brush to clear, nor do they have a plethora of perennial weeds such as quackgrass, bindweed, Canada thistle, among others. After the grain or forage has been cut, one application of a broad-spectrum herbicide such as Roundup (glyphosate; see Figure 1 ), followed by perhaps 2 passes with a disc, is often all it takes to prepare a field for bed shaping and fall seeding.
Gardening Without Irrigation: ToC & Ch. 1 For many succeeding years at Lorane, I raised lots of organically grown food on Ironically, only then did I grow my first summertime vegetable without http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030201/03020101intro.html
Extractions: Two months later, in June, just as my garden began needing water, my so-called 15-gallon-per-minute well began to falter, yielding less and less with each passing week. By August it delivered about 3 gallons per minute. Fortunately, I wasn't faced with a completely dry well or one that had shrunk to below 1 gallon per minute, as I soon discovered many of my neighbors were cursed with. Three gallons per minute won't supply a fan nozzle or even a common impulse sprinkler, but I could still sustain my big raised-bed garden by watering all night, five or six nights a week, with a single, 2-1/2 gallon-per-minute sprinkler that I moved from place to place. I had repeatedly read that gardening in raised beds was the most productive vegetable growing method, required the least work, and was the most water-efficient system ever known. So, without adequate irrigation, I would have concluded that food self-sufficiency on my homestead was not possible. In late September of that first year, I could still run that single sprinkler. What a relief not to have invested every last cent in land that couldn't feed us.