The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - 0054 Stale Seed Bedding, Finding Buyers for your Produce

Episode Date: June 26, 2015

Youssef Darwich joins me for this episode. Youssef is the farm manager for the Grand Valley State University Sustainable Agriculture project in Michigan. He has been playing around with stale seed-bedding techniques. We talk about that, and about the challenge of finding new customers in a market that appears to be saturated.

This is the Ruminant Podcast, and I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant is a website and podcast devoted to sharing good ideas among farmers and gardeners. At the site you'll find links to past episodes, as well as photo-based blog posts, essays, and book reviews. I hope you'll check it out. It's all at theruminant.ca. One recent post you'll find on the site is a short essay I've written about what it feels like when you've made so many changes to your farm business heading into a new season that you kind of lose your bearings a little bit and you have no idea how well or how badly you're doing. If you want to get in touch with me, you can write me an email, editor at theruminant.ca or get at me on Twitter at ruminantblog. Do you have a cool idea

about farming or gardening that you'd like to share with my listeners, consider recording a short audio clip and texting it to me, 250-767-6636, or email it, as I said, editor at theruminant.ca. Okay, let's do the show. All right. Hey, everybody. Remember me, Jordan Marr. I missed last week. I'm sorry. It was real busy. I struggled. I struggled to be able to get an episode up, so I just didn't put one up instead. Anyway, that's probably going to happen. We've already talked about that, or I've talked about that. Sometimes you'll just get no episode, hopefully not very much. Sometimes you'll get a rerun, and hopefully most of the time you get brand new content. I'm talking about this summer period of craziness on my farm. It is really hard to get it together to produce this

thing. It's not just the interviewing. It is finding the interviews and then booking the interviews and then recording the interviews and then doing the post-production and then posting it, all that stuff. It's hard to do. So I'm going to, if you don't mind, not give myself a really hard time when I give you no episode or reruns, but I will try very hard to give you new content as much as possible. I, this week, had a miracle happen. I didn't have any content once again, but I got a call from a former, well, kind of a guest. He's been on the show. He had a few clips that I shared on the show. I met Yusuf Darwish at Permaculture Voices 2. We were roomies for a little bit in a hostel that we were staying in before the conference.

And we had a few meals together and just hung out a bit during the conference. He's a cool guy. Yusuf is the current farm manager at the GVSU Sustainable Agriculture Project in Michigan. And he formerly was on the program to talk a little bit about the cool things you can do with geographic information systems as regards farming. But he called me out of the blue yesterday to give me a tip for stale seed bedding. Essentially, he's found a way to, he's located a source of recycled materials if you want to put tarps in your garden to, to take your stale seed bedding one step more, if you are a gardener, a market gardener, um, I won't say much more because we get into it in the conversation. We talk about

stale seed bedding a bit, which I've already talked a bit about on the show, but, uh, you can hear a bit more. We go into a bit more detail. And then after that, we just talk a little bit about market gardening in general. So there's just a bit of general stuff at the end. Hope you like it. And I hope to be back at you next week with some new material. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy. Yusuf Darwish, thank you for accommodating my embarrassing error yesterday. No reason.

Yesterday, you called me out of the blue. We met at Permaculture Voices 2 conference and you gave some you gave me a recording with some suggestions for other farmers

that has aired on a previous episode and you called me out of the blue with a new tip a new piece of advice which was awesome and I ran inside

and I got my recording equipment and I hooked it up and I went back outside where it was quiet and i ran inside and i got my recording equipment and i hooked it up and i went back outside where it was quiet and we proceeded to have a conversation and then about two and a half seconds after we hung up i realized i hadn't pressed record and now and now i called you out of the blue and you're willing to re-record. So thanks, man. So we were talking, essentially, this is going to be another, another focus on stale seed bedding, which I've talked about on the podcast before I've had, um, other people talking about. Um, but essentially it's, uh, a method of weed control and weed suppression where you prep your beds ahead of time

and, and then you water them in and you let them sit for a period before you plant and you try and germinate the weeds ahead of time so in a more basic form you just do what i just described and then you would just lightly scuff the weeds off but some people including author jean martin fortier in his book, The Market Gardener, advocate taking it a step further and covering your beds with a thick plastic mulch, like a plastic tarp, anything that is going to hold the moisture in and provide complete dark and keep it even warmer under the tarp. And so that the weeds germinate and then they kill themselves because they have poor growing conditions. They're just in the dark and they die and when you pull up the

tarp it's bare so that's what we're gonna we're gonna touch on that again what uh what's your piece of advice for uh for listeners well so i i had heard that before and very interested and look i was looking for tarps and you know kind of shopping around a little bit i wanted something that was going to last for a long time you know because with any sort of farming stuff you don't want to have continual inputs so i was looking at uh hay tarps at some farm stores around here but they were rather expensive and still kind of thin um but then i stumbled online um old recycled billboard tarps um which are UV-treated vinyl, and they're anywhere between 8 and 12 millimeters thick. So they're not really going to deteriorate or anything like that.

They'll last for, I'm hoping, 20 years, and they don't really fray either. You can cut little holes into them them maybe if you want to use them as even a landscape mulch. For stale seed baiting, they work great. They're black on one side. I think you can get them white on one side too. But yeah, they work really well. The weeds pop up very quickly

and then they die. Although I do have some trouble with some grasses, I will say, even with the tarpon. It doesn't seem to kill them completely. But flame weeding after the fact seems to help with that. Yeah, definitely stuff like, it seems like couch grass can be pretty hard if it's still got some vigor to it when you cover it up.

So you've actually, okay, so we're going to talk about these used tarps in just a sec, but you've actually tried this technique and it's working for you? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing. If you look underneath, after four or five days, there's just thousands and thousands of weed seeds, and they're really yellow and really leggy, and if you leave them on, They're really yellow and really leggy. And if you leave them on, in my experience, just shy of two weeks, all the little weeds die. And it's pretty incredible because this left is just this nice black surface.

And then you can plant them too. Any way you can get rid of weeds, like say for loose leaf lettuce or anything like that really, i think it's a huge help totally and this is good timing i just pulled up so i'm i'm working with these tarps as well this year and i just pulled one up that had a good long like four weeks and right beside it was the um an identical number of beds prepared the same way. So all these beds were composted and amended ahead of time, shaped, you know, roughly shaped ahead of time. And then I didn't have enough tarps. So one section of nine 50 foot beds were tarped and the other section were left open. And I just pulled it back and it was amazing because the one left open, again, I've, I've, I've effectively done a stale seed bed just covered in weeds, now getting quite large.

When I pull the other back, just absolutely bare. But you know that those same weed seeds germinated, but they died. So it's just saving me work now, and I won't have to disturb the soil as much before I plant. With this one without the tarp, I'll have to disturb the soil a fair bit just to get those weeds taken care of, whether I just scuff or whether I end up tilling a little bit. Do you ever flame weed yourself? I'm not flame weeding yet. I haven't taken that step.

So I don't have that option right now. I would recommend it. It seems to work pretty well. Yeah, so that would be just if you do have anything lingering is to go over with the flamer and kill everything hey yeah well even say you're more pressed for time

and they're really vulnerable at that point so you can just go through have this little backpack thing that puts a propane tank on a little porch. You just kind of flame the bed and it kills those little plants. It just expedites the process. Right, right. What kind of flame weeder do you have, Yusuf?

I don't know the brand. It's just like a propane tank you'd use for a grill with the backpack and the porch. It's pretty generic. It's not, I would like to have one of those that roll over the bed and have like multiple outlets, but this one's just really simple. It's a single porch. Right. Anyway, it's funny as we have this conversation i have two

i have a quebecois angel and a quebecois devil on my shoulder um the devil i already mentioned it's john martin and he's saying yeah go for it and because this is just such an effective weed suppression technique and the angel is uh another former guest and colleague and friend, Dan Brisbois, who is friends with Jean Martin, who doesn't, I don't think he supports the notion of these tarps. He just thinks it's another, it's an, it's another need for more materials, more plastic. So he's, he's saying, nah, you don't need that. And he's kind of, I think he told me, I'm paraphrasing him. I'm not quoting him, but I think he told me he's getting tired of hearing all about these tarps and i think that's a fair criticism to

raise but that's where it's just it's that's where it's cool that it seems like you found um a way to recycle so let's get into that a little more i think the website i got it was just billboard tarps.com but but you touched on a good point there. You know, plastic use in agriculture is pretty significant. And if we can reuse, you know, materials that are already made, you know, so we're not making more of them manufactured and all that, I think it's a great way to utilize that resource. And like I was saying earlier, these billboard carts will last forever. Why not, you know, put them to good use on a farm rather than having them sit in a warehouse or a landfill or something like

that right so you're saying they're they're 8 to 12 millimeters somewhere in there which you which is a really decent thickness in terms of durability they're uv treated um do you have any concerns yusuf about the i don't know that because these are these are former advertisements like the inks that like anything that could could leach into the soil sure um i'm not super concerned because they're made to be weatherproof so you know you don't ever really see a billboard you know the ink streaking or anything like that I suppose if you're going to be using it over 20 years

there certainly will be some leeches or leeches but yeah I'm not thinking about it too much I probably should but I'm not too concerned and you haven't mentioned the single best thing about using these tarps other than the weed suppression.

What is the extra bonus of using these tarps? Oh, right. Sometimes you get old, you know, random advertisements on one side. I usually have them face down, but, like, I got a few of them. And one is, like, about eating fruits and veggies, which is pretty fitting, especially that you don't get to pick what advertisement you get. One of them's for a cat T-Rex though, so that's pretty random.

I have my fields, some of my fields are visible from the highway, so if I ever try sourcing this way, I guess I could end up extending the life of the advertisement for Viagra or something. Yeah. end up you know extending the life of the advertisement for like viagra or something yeah um yeah that'd be a good source too maybe uh if you're next to a busy road you can just put up a billboard on your property and you know just take all the old tarts that get put up there and so um can we just go over dimensions and cost what like what what sizes did you find available Can we just go over dimensions and cost?

What sizes did you find available? Yeah, they have quite a range. The size I opted for, they're 28 feet by 48 feet. And for me, that covers about eight beds with the dimensions I do. The beds I work are pretty significantly mounded though because we have a lot of drainage issues with the clay. So we made the beds kind of wider than kind of the standard. So ours are about three and a half feet and we have about a two foot walkway. So we can get about eight beds covered and our beds are just over 25 feet okay where we do more high rotation stuff and um so okay so what did you

pay for the you said 28 by did you say 48 yeah 28 by 48 and shipped to to my door was around 155 okay well i can not that, I can say like for some, I've got some like 10 or 12 mil film that I'm using. I found black on black. And if anyone's interested, like what I ended up finding that's working the best is this, the one I'm talking about. It's haylage tarp. It's, it's, it's, it's meant for

dairy farmers or any other livestock farmers that are making hay into fermented hay, haylage, and mounting up massive piles of it. And then you end up tarping it, making it airtight in order for the fermentation to take place. So if you, if you Google silage plastic or haylage plastic, you can find suppliers. And definitely mine was a bit more expensive, not a lot more expensive, but it's cool that you are, you know, I do think there's still lingering question. I think, you know, are these recycled billboard tarps safe to use in agriculture, just in terms of any leaching that can take place? I agree with you, Yusuf. It's probably not a huge concern or risk,

but it'd be worth looking into a bit more. But at any rate, what's cool about you using those is just that you're using recycled materials versus me using brand new stuff. And it sounds like your stuff will indeed last a long time. So what were the prices like for the tarps you got i'm trying to remember i i just offhand i think i bought a so quite a larger piece um i got a 50 by 100 piece for about 300 so actually on a on a on a square foot basis that i think that's cheaper than yours.

Yeah, that seems actually, uh, quite a bit cheaper than the billboard touch actually. Yeah, no, I think, I think, I think people can do their own calculation. Um, but it, I think it is a fair bit cheaper. Uh, but that's good. I mean the, the diff, but I think it's relevant that your option is recycled. I think that'll matter to people. And it's also just good to have recycled. I think that'll matter to people. And it's also just good to have options. Depending on where you live, it's going to be easier or harder to get the silage tarp. I'm in a region with lots of dairy farms, so there's suppliers around here, shipping was cheap, that sort of thing.

Right, I know that was one of the first options I was actually looking for, but at all the farm stores that I went to, the charts that they did have just weren't thick enough. Yeah, right. And the price wasn't right. Yeah. Well, too, with the charts that you have, or what I have for that matter, that you can just get the sizes that are appropriate for the beds that you have. You know, because what do you do, 100-foot beds yourself? I do 50. so i got the

bot the 50 by 100 so i could cut it down to 50 by 50 which is what i did um and then 50 50 feet for me given that i raise my beds a bit i'm on two and a half foot beds on four foot centers so when you when you when you crunch that 50 feet gives me a little bit more than i need to cover nine beds which just happens to be like I plant nine beds of greens every single week so I've got blocks set up for that planting block so it's just the perfect size and and Jean Martin is it really emphasizes that to make sure you get the right sizing so that you can move those tarps around the farm and they're really versatile and that's that's what I've done and that's working well so yeah it is really important

and the thing is the I should point out another nice thing about buying these silage tarps haylage tarps is um they're often customizable so so mine wasn't completely but i had an option between 30 foot wide 40 foot wide 50 foot wide and maybe even wider and then like unlimited length or or at least i could get up to 200 feet length or 400 feet length something like that so yeah it's good to know about that stuff yeah uh i have one last question for you yeah man how do you secure your carts down um i have now uh i started out just using i i have we happen to have a whole bunch of old fencing rails they're they're um lumber like they're they're i think they were um spruce or cedar and they're like 12 or 16 feet

long and i was using those but i i've since just started taking the extra time to bury the the edges of the tarp and i'm finding it way less stressful a little more time to do that but no the wind is not a factor once you bury those edges um and really to do my 50 by 50 foot piece it takes two of us each with like a standard garden spade like a standard garden shovel we it takes us 10 minutes to bury it and that's you know i covering nine beds, each two and a half by 50 feet, all in one shot. And I find that superior. And I've talked to one older farmer who pointed out that you're just going to get better heat underneath the tarp as well when you don't have air blowing through. Cause that's, what's going to happen. Even if the wind's not

going to blow your tarp away, if you've got weights that you're still going to be getting air kind of blowing through the tarp underneath and cooling it down. So that's worked really well for me. Okay. Yeah, we're using old fence bolts too, actually. That's interesting. I have a rotary plow for my walking my walking tractor and i thought i was going to be able to like a rotary plow is really good at throwing soil to one side so i thought i was going to be able to just like go around the perimeter of the of the tarp and just blow the soil on to the edges and i can but it's that's something that starts to get too disruptive of

my other beds and just other parts of the garden and it's easy to get too close to the plastic and in the end yeah two people you know 50 by 50 10 minutes i'm just going to go with that it's working and it's not very disruptive so that that's what we've been doing uh the last little while and uh have you found like with the technique you've been implementing that that weed pressure has continually been decreasing or has it been about the same? It's actually way too early to say. I have to say, Yusuf, like I'm only now five years into my business starting to take weed pressure seriously. And I was kind of feeling bad about that, like the last couple of years watching the weeds be like kind of bad. watching the weeds be like kind of bad. And then my wife, Vanessa made me feel a bit better and just pointed out like, you know, Jordan, you had higher priorities to learn and take care of first before you got to the position to, to be, to focus on your weed control. And I thought about it. I'm like, yeah, that was, that's pretty true. You know, like, um, first of all, it's just my style

of farming. I'm not, I'm not a super detail orientedoriented farmer, super methodical. But it's also true that I've, like, five years in, or this is my fifth year, like, I've gotten a lot of my other systems down. And I'm now in a position, because I've become more efficient, to focus on the weed problem. So this stale seed bedding, I'm just doing it in a serious way for the first year, first time. So I couldn't say so i i couldn't

say yet i couldn't say okay well i'd be interested to see the the long-term results of that are you uh on a permanent piece of land now are you still renting no i'm still i'm still still renting so that's the other thing like um it doesn't dampen my enthusiasm to like focus on stuff like this you know knowing that i might not be here for very much longer so you know say over two or three years i just kick ass at weed control and all of a sudden i've got like way less weed pressure i may leave right at that point and then the person who inherits it benefits but it's still it's still it's still valuable just in terms of my mastering the techniques, I guess. And, uh,

but, but yeah, um, you know, that kind of longterm investment could end up not really benefiting me too much, uh, other than the learning that's taking place.

Right. That's interesting. Yeah. Hey folks. So a little bit further into our conversation, Yusuf and I started talking about his plans for having a market garden and he was asking me about my market garden. And so, well, I'll let him take it from there. Yeah. I would like to be kind of on the fringe of the urban rural, like, you know,

the edge there. Um, so land prices will be kind of cheaper but i still have access to those markets yeah does that sound about like your situation um sort of yeah yeah i mean definitely i would i guess i should say definitely because like um i've got i'm not near any major centers but i've got you know a city of 120,000 30 minutes north and a city of 50 and a city of 50,000 30 minutes south so easily enough at least in in the context of how many other veggie gardeners there are which there are lots but not so many that that we all most of us can find markets for our stuff yeah yeah and see that's the thing with the place I'm at now, Grand Rapids, Michigan. You know, it's a great place for agriculture.

In fact, like, the area in West Michigan here is, like, the second largest, like, microclimate for vegetables and agriculture in the U.S. besides Napa Valley. But it's pretty saturated, like, with the other growers. So it's kind of hard to fetch a good price well I don't want to give you false hopes or make false promises I just like I think to me what that translates into is

to me you can look at your the business you want to start the market garden you want to say start in like two different contexts right like there's there's there's any given year that you're operating and then there's the long-term prospects and to me what you describe is going to affect you year over you know in a given year especially your first year right like there's no low-hanging fruit to me that's what you're saying there's no low-hanging fruit like like the market's saturated but you know i just think there's a lot of promise in the fact that it's still only what is it i'm

being arbitrary and inaccurate but it's got to be like between five and 20% of our urban populations are specifically buying local, right? Like they're not, there's just such a big part of the population that hasn't done, isn't doing that yet. And that's a potential market. And, um, I, I just think it means that we all, but especially those who are yet to get into farming, they're just going to have to try harder and hustle and be patient and start meeting people a little more towards halfway. In other words, I think when you say the market's saturated, to me, what I translated into without asking you more questions about it is that all the people who want to do like the traditional csa are doing it all the chefs who are already converted over to supporting local

are doing it um but that's where i think there's room to meet people just at convenience like start making it more convenient for them and i should say this is it wouldn't be possible without some of the cool technology that's being developed and made available to us all as small scale farmers, right? Like, you know, the mechanical greens harvester and the BCS tractor and all this stuff that

is just making us more competitive with larger agriculture. And suddenly we can start to charge those lower prices that allow us to compete and attract that larger percentage of the population for whom who are like more price sensitive right um and and yet still make enough of a profit so i don't know if i'm being overly optimistic um no i i think you have you have a lot of good points there and i think i'm actually trying to actualize that a bit with, you know, the student farm, like, with our campus dining. Like, you know, there's no way I could even charge, like, $4 or $5 a pound to sell lettuce, you know, to campus dining. You know, that's more than fair price anywhere else.

But, you know, for right now, i'm just basically giving it away for free just to try and forge that relationship yeah and get them like right so so so at well at the grand valley you know student farm that i manage um we just after like a year and a half, two year process, got approved to sell to Campus Dining, which is supplied by Airmark. So, you know, very, very big, you know, corporation that's used to paying wholesale prices for everything. And, you know, what they're concerned with is the bottom line. Well, so now,

just to initially start this relationship I'm basically agreeing to whatever prices they ask for some of those were kind of grandfathered in by the last previous manager who had more of a conventional mindset but at any rate I'm trying to just build this relationship with them to get them hooked to the quality of product we're producing so then down the road we can renegotiate for more fair prices. And I think there's a lot of benefits on both sides of that. So they get the benefit

of this produce they have a great story to tell you know so they can make more money and then we get that publicity too and we can attract volunteers so i think it's a complex relationship but and it's yeah it's it's a compelling it's a compelling approach i mean i know it's, yeah, it's, it's a compelling, it's a compelling approach. I mean, I know it's, that's a tricky one, right? Like, do you, do you potentially even lose money on your crop in order to, in order to, to, to give, give them the time to, to, to actually use your stuff and realize it's different. Cause I've seen that happen. I mean, I've seen those restaurants, I have the odd restaurant customer that doesn't charge the higher values, you know, like they're servicing, they're more like pub food. And so they're the ones for whom it's much harder to buy my salad greens, but I've seen the odd restaurant like that actually use them and really appreciate that their shelf life

is way better. And so right there, they realize like, well, is it that much more expensive? Because I don't keep opening bags and finding wilted crappy greens that I'm throwing out anyway. Um, so, so realizing that quality can just mean more, like it's actually better priced in the end, like better economics, but also just quality for quality sake. Um, so yeah, I mean, I guess it's that sort of thing I'm talking about. Your specific example is tricky just because a farmer shouldn't be having to charge, say, less than the cost of producing it. At the same time, as you point out, it'd be hard to get them to agree to try your stuff out otherwise, eh? Yeah, but see, that where our our situation is unique because at the sustainable agriculture project we're kind of subsidized by the university a bit um so like i i'm only part-time but i'm on a salary

yeah and my salary isn't influenced at all by sales. Right, right, right. At the same, in the same breath, like I'm still, you know, experiencing pressure from the university to make it a profitable thing. But it's never been there in the past and it's been around for several years now. But I think we're going to get to that point because, you know, we have a lot of things going in our favor. Right. you know we have a lot of things going in our favor right but so with all that said because we kind of have that extra advantage to where you know i have a bit more of a buffer i think we're a good party to try and kind of infiltrate this institution you know yeah no i get that that makes that makes sense yeah just since you're not you're not in quite the same position as an individual for-profit farmer. Right.

So I'm trying to make a case for that. Yeah, totally. No, you could view it that way. You're in a position to kind of be the vanguard almost and perform a service that could benefit, that could win over new customers for other farmers down the road, almost, in some respects. Right. And hopefully, I'm trying to create a bit of a hub here,

you know, so we can pull in all the sound. Because, like I've kind of mentioned before, West Michigan's agriculture is really thriving, but there's a lot of pieces that are disconnected that are really obvious connections that nobody's doing it. A lot of these farms that are doing good work need help, but there's no way for these educated people to get access to it. They don't know because usually farm work is word of mouth

or random craigslist ads or something like that. Cool, man. Well, Yusuf, next time you have a great idea, I hope you'll text or phone it in. Sure thing. Thanks for coming back on the show, man. Always happy to be on here. Okay, that's it. I hope you like that, folks.

Yusuf, once again, is the farm manager at the Grand Valley State University Sustainable Ag Project. And he told me that if you want to get a hold of him, you can write him. It's one of those university-type email addresses that's kind of weird. D-A-R-W-I-C-Y-O. D-A-R-W-I-C-Y-O at G-V-S-U dot E-D-U. Fill your boots with emails to Yusuf. Okay, that's it for the week. Once again,

you'll hear my wife Vanessa on the way out here. She is singing one of her original songs that she wrote, kind of a whimsical one, about moving out into the countryside. I'm going to shut up so you can listen to it. Thanks, everybody. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve. I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong.

So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces. We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Bye.