Category: Gardening methods

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Farming Software – Organic Farmer 4.0

Maintaining organic certification requires keeping complete, extensive and detailed records about all aspects of farm work, and requires keeping copies of receipts for all purchases of seeds, fertilizers, etc. Even market gardeners that do not seek organic certification must maintain extensive records to be compliant with food safety laws as codified in the FSMA. As I am an intrinsically disorganized person, I have created a relational database to facilitate keeping and maintaining the required records. The database is now on its third iteration of improvement. The beauty of the database is that it runs in the cloud on Airtable, which allows access by smartphone from the field, as well as via web browser from a laptop or desktop computer.

Annual recertification of an organic farm requires an inspection that typically takes two to three hours, with most of this time devoted to auditing farm records. During High & Dry Farm’s most recent certification inspection, Airtable allowed me to power through the audit, which was completed within one hour, with no significant issues reported.

We am now making this database system, Organic Farmer 4.0, available to farmers completely without charge. Sign up for a free Airtable account here. Once you have signed up, download a copy of the Organic Farmer 4.0 database to your Airtable account here. Detailed instructions for use of Organic Farmer 4.0 can be found here.

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Farming Software – Organic Farmer 2.0

Maintaining organic certification requires keeping complete, extensive and detailed records about all aspects of farm work, and requires keeping copies of receipts for all purchases of seeds, fertilizers, etc. Even market gardeners that do not seek organic certification must maintain extensive records to be compliant with food safety laws as codified in the FSMA. As I am an intrinsically disorganized person, I have created a relational database to facilitate keeping and maintaining the required records. The beauty of the database is that it runs in the cloud on Airtable, which allows access by smartphone from the field, as well as via web browser from a laptop or desktop computer.

When High and Dry Farm recently received its initial inspection for organic certification, the inspector was blown away by the power of this system. A standard part of such inspections is for the inspector to point to a recent sale of a farm product, and demand that the farmer show records demonstrating that the product in question was indeed grown on the farm and was grown using organic methods. The inspector pointed to a sale of 10 lbs of fennel. Using the data base, within 60 seconds, I was able to show that the fennel in question was planted in the greenhouse, on a specific date, using seeds purchased on a specific date from Johnny’s Seeds, and the database provided an image of the seed package and of the purchase receipt. I showed records indicating that the plants were transplanted into Bed D of plot #2 on a specific date and harvested on a specific date, and I showed records indicating that the bed in question had been amended on a specific date with organic fertilizers, showing images of the receipts for the fertilizer purchases.

We am now making this database system, Organic Farmer 2.0, available to farmers completely without charge. Sign up for a free Airtable account here. Once you have signed up, download a copy of the Organic Farmer 2.0 database to your Airtable account here. Detailed instructions for use of Organic Farmer 2.0 can be found here.

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Microgreen seeds

When my pea crops stopped producing, I allowed those pods that had become to mature to dry on the vine. When shelled, this yielded 3 lbs of snow pea seeds and 2 lbs of shelling pea seeds. I will use these to produce microgreen pea shoots over the winter. This amount of seeds purchased commercially would cost $80-$100 including shipping.

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My high tunnel

I am building a high tunnel greenhouse this summer. Only the back wall remains to be completed, as shown below.

The structure is 13′ by 64′, with the hoops 7.5′ tall at the center. I have been roughly following the plans described in this pdf from Johnny’s Seeds. The beauty of this approach is that the material with the most expensive shipping costs, the hoops, can obtained locally. The hoops are formed by bending and joining two chain link fence top rails, which are sold by local Lowes and Home Depot stores.  Cheapskate that I am, I did not buy the hoop bender device sold by Johnny’s, but I created my own bender by cutting a 7′ radius arc into a piece of 2×10 lumber.  Here is the bender I created, mounted on the wall of my tractor shed.

I deviated from the pdf plans by using 3/4″ EMT conduit for the center purlin, and simply linked this to the hoops with carriage bolts. The Johnny’s plans use more fence top rails and link these to the hoops with pricey adapter brackets. My approach saves some $ and still produces a very solid structure.  Johnny’s provides plans for shorter (6′) and taller  (8′) versionsof the hoop house.  I split the difference.  I pounded 4′ sections of chain link fence post material 2′ into the ground, and inserted the hoop rails about 1′ into the projecting portion of the pipes, giving me hoops that were about 7.5′ at the center.

In preparation for building the greenhouse, I covered the footprint with a tarp for 4 months, killing the grass and weeds, or at least weakening them. I then covered with a half ton of horse manure and rototilled.  After skinning the green house, with 6 mil poly, I redug the beds to a depth of about 14-16″ using a broadfork (dimly visible at the far end of the high tunnel) , and worked in another quarter ton of composted horse manure along with 10 lbs of lime and 10 lbs of bone meal. The soil is still very rough and lacking tilth, but tilth will come with time and love

As you can see, I have already transplanted a row with tomatoes, with a few melon plants at the end of the row. I am creating slightly raised beds. The beds are 30″ wide, with 10″ paths. I am putting two lines of rip tape for drip irrigation in each bed, but these are not yet connected to the requisite filter and pressure regulator.  That will be accomplished this weekend. The tomatoes will be trained to climb twine suspended from the hoops above (images coming soon). The two rows at the side of the greenhouse will be planted with lettuce, spinach, kale and brassicas, hopefully producing crops that will last late into the winter.

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Low tunnels

This year I am introducing a new method for making low tunnels.  6′ lengths of 3/4″ poly tubing are threaded onto lengths of bamboo.

The bamboo is inserted in the bed to create an arc.  These are linked at the centerline with a baling twine, and the hoops are then covered with poly film.

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Greenhouse heated bench

Here is my new cable-heated bench for getting my tomato starts off to a strong start. 100′ of heating cable on a 3×12′ bench.  An Inkbird C206 thermostat controls Redi-heat 8554 cable.

[Update 4/5/2017] Sadly, the heating cables stopped heating after only one month in use. The thermostat continues to work well, so it now powers two 150W heat lamps.

bench

bench dirt 2