The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.06: Better Nutrient Managment for your Soil

Episode Date: July 24, 2015

This episode, a rerun from 2013, when Soil Scientist Clare Sullivan joined me to talk about managing nutrient cycles on the farm. After that, I talk about the results of my effort to attract more beneficial insects to my garden using lots of mulched annual flowers.

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. TheRuminant.ca is a website dedicated to sharing good ideas for farmers and gardeners. At The Ruminant, you can find past episodes of this podcast, essays I've written, a few book reviews, and a whole lot of photo-based blog posts, some of which were made by me and some of which were submitted by you. So I hope you'll check it out, TheRuminant.ca. And if you want to I hope you'll check it out. TheRuminant.ca And if you want to get a hold of me, editor at TheRuminant.ca or at RuminantBlog on Twitter. Okay, let's do this show.

And your train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it. The wood's easy finding, but you're lazy to fetch it. That's Bob Dylan reciting last thoughts on Woody Guthrie. And I can really relate to the sentiment expressed in that one line. It's not that I haven't had the time to put out podcast episodes in the last few weeks. And it's not like at least I didn't have some content to share because I've got these old episodes that have never made it onto the new podcast feed that I think some of you would like to hear. But it's been difficult. The farm is so

busy and I'm just finding when I get in at the end of the day, I just don't have the energy to put on the microphones and turn on the computer and get it all set up. So I apologize, folks. The wood's been easy finding, but I've been lazy to fetch it. Anyway, things are getting a little better. I think we've turned a corner in tackling the weeds on the farm and it's going to be a little smoother sailing from here for the rest of the season. I almost didn't get this podcast up today because, well, it coincided with a hang that came a little sooner than we expected. And we had some machinery breakdowns and, well, it took longer to get the hand, but that's just about all done or it's done to the point where

I can rely on my staff and colleagues to take care of it. So I'm, I scrambled inside and here I am recording after a three week hiatus. Well, mostly a rerun. What you're about to hear is an episode that was released quite a while ago. I think it was number six, Claire Sullivan on nutrient management on your farm. And I won't say much more. I can just let that play in just a minute here. But those of you listening, thanks for your patience and for hanging in there with this short hiatus. I'm going to try to at the very least get some old episodes up in the incoming weeks, but I'm also optimistic I can get an interview or two going as well. Some fresh material, worst case scenario, I'll come back at you

towards September with new stuff. And then it should be new stuff all the way through the fall. I am still very interested in receiving your own pitches for the show. If you've got an idea for the show that you want to share, something you think other farmers and gardeners would like to know about, please get in touch. Editor at theruminant.ca. You can text me at 250-767-6636. And you know what? You could even record a piece of audio on your phone and then text it to me or email it to me. So editor of TheRoomMinute.ca, 250-767-6636. Anyway, here's Claire Sullivan.

And then after that, I'm going to say a few more new words, just an observation I've made at my own farm this year for those who are interested. And that'll be it. Hope you enjoy this one, folks. Talk to you soon. Oh, and one more thing. This episode was recorded back before I had figured out some of the challenges of getting high quality audio. So there are quite a few pops. And I apologize for that. In this episode, I speak with Claire Sullivan. Claire is a nutrient management consultant. And in this episode, we talk about the proper timing of compost and other amendment application to your soils, when the best time is to turn in under

green manures, and a few other topics related to best practices in nutrient retainment and management on your farm. Claire Sullivan, welcome to the Ruminant Podcast. Thank you, thanks for having me. Great. Well, Claire, normally I have my guests introduce themselves, but since we're old pals, I can start and then you can kind of correct me where I'm off the ball. So we actually met in our undergraduate program at the University of British Columbia. We actually met in our undergraduate program at the University of British Columbia. We were both enrolled in a sort of hippy-dippy interdisciplinary program that was based in the Faculty of Agriculture. You went on to do a Master's of Soil Science in the University of Saskatoon or Saskatchewan?

Saskatchewan. Right. So maybe you could take over for me at this point. Okay, sure. So, well, between my degrees, I also worked in the Okanagan sort of with integrated pest management on orchards and then picking fruit, you know, just to make some money. So my master's in soil science out in Saskatchewan was exactly as you said, Jordan, because our previous program at UBC was a little bit airy-fairy, shall we say.

I really wanted to do something that was sort of hard science, soil science, and Saskatchewan has the biggest soil program in Canada. So that was attractive and got a lot of good professors there and resources. So I was the only student actually working on an organic project and mine was looking at reducing tillage in organic agriculture on the prairies. So very different than out here. There it's obviously expensive agriculture and they have to use green manure to return nutrients to their soil. So they have to take a whole season, growing season to do it because they can't cover crop

over the winter. So sort of most of the research is focused on reducing tillage in that green manure year. And so that's what I was looking at, different combinations of terminating the green manure either by tilling it in or rolling it with this implement called the roller crimper or mowing it and just different combinations, different types of green manures. Did some research in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and basically found that it was possible to reduce tillage to differing degrees depending on the climate zone and sort of what green manure you're using and

it not negatively affect your yield the next year. So that was the main thing I was looking at was nutrient cycling within a system where you're doing a green manure one year and then your main crop the next year. Okay, so let me stop you there and first just clarify, the reason the organic growers have to have a whole year of green manure in order to take care of their nutrient requirements is just that they don't have a whole suite of synthetic fertilizers that the conventional growers would have. Is that correct? Yeah, definitely. And because whereas out here you might apply on a smaller farm, say a smaller organic farm, you might apply some sort of animal manure or even compost.

Typically, the organic farms out there, we're talking like thousands of acres. And so they don't have that luxury of being able to apply that. So they'll dedicate one season to growing your green manure so that those nutrients can get cycled back in. I suppose that's a big reason why organic grain is so much more expensive than conventional, right? Just because they have to spend so much more time fallowing land. Yeah, definitely. Okay. And then could you go over, you mentioned that the whole kind of focus of your project was, you know, whether you can reduce tillage and still effectively do your nutrient management and prepare the land for the next year. So what's the argument for reducing tillage in the first place?

Right. Good question. Especially out in the prairies, they're focused on reducing tillage quite a bit more because in conventional agriculture, they've really made a push towards reduced tillage because tillage tends to disrupt the structure of your soil and will more easily result in erosion either by wind or water. Out in the prairies, it's more an issue with wind erosion or it used to be. But now that farmers sort of keep the stubble on their field so they'll just harvest and directly seed into stubble then they've found a great reduction in erosion and then you're

building up your soil organic matter. And in organic agriculture where they're dependent on tillage both for killing that green manure or terminating it, returning it to the soil and also weed control. If you're constantly killing your soil, you're creating, you're basically increasing your rate, not only disturbing the soil structure, but you're also sort of continuing increasing the rate of mineralization and you're sending carbon basically into the atmosphere instead of building that organic carbon in your soil. You're sort of shooting it off with the ball and more tillage. And so could you briefly just summarize what came out of your research?

Like what did you conclude or which of the methods? Were any of the lower tillage methods effective? Effective to a point where commercial growers would take on the practices? Yeah, I would say, well, it was different. I'd had sort of three different studies I was involved in, but the main one was in Saskatchewan, and what we looked at was really just a reduction in tillage because you either tilled the green manure,

rolled it with this roller crimper, or mowed it with a flail mower for termination, but then afterwards all of the fields were still tilled, so it was really just reducing your tillage by about half and we found that there was no difference the next year and your what we were looking at was wheat nitrogen uptake and sort of protein content and yield the next year and there was no difference between those methods so you could say that you you could reduce your tillage by half without having a negative effect and the farmers were interested year and there was no difference between those methods. So you could say that you could reduce

your tillage by half without having a negative effect. And the farmers were interested in it because tillage also requires more, it has a higher energy cost, so just your fuel and the fact that you're dragging an implement through the soil, it raises your costs. Now a flail mower is more realistic probably because farmers would have access to that, whereas a roller crimper, they would either have to buy the implement or they could probably get crafty and make one. But growers are pretty interested in it just because there is a lot of research going on and there are a couple of people adopting it.

And the benefit of the roller over the mower would be that the roller, you're keeping the mulch sort of anchored to the ground, whereas when you mow something, it can blow away, so you're not maintaining that mulch on the ground. So the roller would be preferable for reducing tillage, but if you didn't have access to it, then a mower would also produce a benefit. Cool well look I'm going to come back to this topic at the very end of this chat when I talk about my own garden and we try and apply some of this knowledge to small scale veggie gardening in

my case but but first maybe you could fast forward a bit and just kind of tell us what you're doing now and well yeah just tell us what you're up to these days. Okay. I am, right now I'm working for the Ministry of Agriculture here in Abbotsford. And what I was hired to do is to, I'm coordinating a soil study that we're doing across the Fraser Valley. So we're sampling, taking soil samples from farms extending from West Delta to East Chilliwack. And we're looking at post-harvest nutrient status. So we're taking soil samples once the farmers have already harvested their crop.

And this is basically the objective of looking at post-harvest nutrient status is to say, okay, what's left in the soil after the growing season, which ideally would not be very much because in BC especially or the lower Fraser Valley with so much rain, your nutrients at the end of the season are really susceptible to loss, nitrogen mostly down to the groundwater or surface water,

and then phosphorus also into surface water. So what it really is is a monitoring that we're doing right now. It's a study that was done the first time in 2005, so this is a follow-up. So it's seven years later, and we're going back to as many of the same farms as possible and seeing, okay, has, have nutrient levels changed? Because hopefully some of their farm practices have changed in the last seven or so years with some of the environmental farm planning that's been a lot more prominent in the last five to 10 years. a lot more prominent in the last five to ten years that's a little synopsis right cool okay so um i guess uh i guess maybe we can start transitioning into um talking a little bit in terms of just some of the practical aspects of all the knowledge in your head for growers um hopefully so so look

here's what's here's what's, I'm really happy to talk to you about reducing tillage and green manure management because I'm interested in doing both. Um, but then, and then maybe we'll talk a little bit about nutrient, uh, leaching in general, because I have a few questions about that. But, um, so look, I, I did a couple of podcasts already earlier on about my intention to keep my pathways in my garden permanently in cover crop, a green manure. To the extent that I've done it so far this season, it was the pathways were in white Dutch clover. And my original thinking was that I would make my pathways the same size as my beds for maybe two years. I'd keep the, uh, the, the, the clover in there and mow it regularly.

And, and then so have the, have the clippings, hopefully with a flail mower, uh, just to get them really, um, into small pieces, have those clippings kind of adding organic matter to the soil. And then every couple of years, perhaps, uh, make the beds, the pathways in the pathways, the beds, and, and theoretically have this nice nutrient or nitrogen rich um pathway become a bed and and be high in nitrogen um so yeah i i don't know maybe i'll just start by asking your general thoughts about that idea um and any practical considerations you can think of okay Okay. I think on the first reaction would be it sounds like a good idea and it's something I've heard of people doing and I've always sort of thought that it's something I

would try to do. I've never actually done it. I've been on a farm where we started growing the permanent pathways and then sort of never got around to rotating them with the beds while I was there, I guess. But in terms of, you're right that if, especially if you have a clover pathway, you'll definitely be fixing nitrogen and the, and as you mow it, you're basically, as you cut the tops, you'll be forcing energy down, like the roots will be growing as well. So you'll get a nice, basically a nice soil under there where you will be growing your organic matter and fixing nitrogen. The one practicality in terms of converting it then into the bed would be figuring out the best timing to do that, I guess, because what does happen as soon as you sort of, as I was mentioning before with tillage, I'm assuming you'd have to till your bed up to then plant into it. And you would get,

depending on what time of year, what your soil moisture is like, what your temperature is like, you'd get like a flush of nutrient release probably within a week or two after tilling that in, especially because it's purely clover, like it's not a mix of something else, right? Yeah, that's right. clover like it's not a mix of something else right yeah that's right so like legumes have a really small c to n ratio carbon to nitrogen ratio so they'll mineralize quite quickly um so you would get a release of nutrients rather quickly once you tilt it in but because you're because you had roots built up in there you probably would also get a fairly sustained release of nutrients,

I guess. Okay. So let's, like, I want to expand this context to incorporate, to encompass more situations. So now let's just talk about turning in clover in terms of timing. If someone's got clover planted as a green manure that they want to turn in for them using as a garden bed. So what, in your opinion, I mean, what are the, what is, so if I, what if, what if I was going to, you asked me, you mentioned timing. If I'm going to, if I'm going to till, do a till in, in the fall, okay, so I've had the clover in for two years, it's in the pathway, it's going to be the bed the next spring. If I till it in and say like mid-October or early October um is that a good idea and and then leave it bare for the summer for the winter so so yeah then leave it for the winter and then plan on perhaps having to to turn it one more time in the early spring and then planting into it uh subsequent to that

yeah for as garden crops right see it's hard because on a practicality standpoint of dealing with clover and the fact that it's not very easy to till in and it will likely start to grow back you'd probably get better like kill of the clover if you did what you just said like started tilling it in the fall and then repeat it in the spring but i think from a nutrient release point of view, doing it early in the spring, like a couple times early in the spring would be better because if you do it in the fall, especially while you're in the Okanagan, it's not as rainy, I guess. Yeah. So I should, I should mention we're, we're, you know, starting around mid-November, we

start to get snow cover in most seasons. So I guess there's a bit of a difference when it's snow versus constant rain, right? Yeah, I know. I was thinking about here. Because I was thinking here that if you tailed it in and then you'd start to get that myrtleization and nutrient release, and then you'd get a lot of rain and you might lose a lot of those nutrients down into the profile. But in the Okanagan where it's a lot drier and colder, well, not a lot colder, but colder enough that your mineralization rates would be slower. So I don't know if I can give you a for sure answer, Jordan. Okay. No, no, no, no. But I'm gleaning. I'm gleaning. I'm gleaning like hell here.

Because also in the spring, what you would want to make sure, basically with your spring tillage, you'd want to make sure it's not so close to when you're planting. Like you want to have had some time between when you're planting. Yeah, I mean, I think most veggie gardeners treat three weeks as a general rule of thumb. That's what we're told, or I read over and over. You want three weeks in between that turn in and planting. Right, depending on what it is.

Right, right, so that soil organisms don't tie up a lot of the nitrogen while they break down the crop residues. Okay, can we talk a little bit about leaching? Because, look, first of all, I just asked you a question for permission. I should allow you to answer. Can we do that, Claire? Of course, yeah. Oh, great.

Let's talk about leaching. I've kind of had this contention or assumption that with organic agriculture, there's a lot less leaching in general because a lot more of your soil nutrients are, A, the ones that you're actually applying to the soil's amendments are in a more stable form, and then b assuming you have good decent organic matter in your soil it's tying up a lot of these um what kind of water soluble nutrients is that a safe assumption i actually asked just asked this question for a different interview but i want to get your answer uh-oh what did they say well you know what one of

the things he it was an irrigation expert he said it was getting a little bit outside his realm of expertise. But he acknowledged that you're better off. It's less of a risk in organic agriculture, but that it was still an issue. So I remember talking to you about this privately another time. Is that a bit of a misconception? I mean, am I still at risk? Because you've studied the timing of turning in different crops. I mean, as a certified organic farmer, am I still at risk of a lot of leaching with poor timing of when I add amendments or when I turn in green manures? Yeah. nutrients it doesn't really matter if you're doing it organically or with the chemical fertilizer Europe risk of sort of losing losing some of those nutrients

either to the air or to the or by leaching depending on what your climate is but the and that the issue does come down to timing and also amount like I think there is a bit of a misconception in organic agriculture that, you know, you can just pile on the compost or pile on the composted manure that you have and, oh, it doesn't, like, it's organic, so, you know, it won't harm the soil. It's just going to build it.

But those, especially if you do have a fairly, like if you have a fairly healthy active soil, things will be cycling through. Generally, your rate of turnover from an organic form of nitrogen to an inorganic form speeds up with temperature and moisture. And so if it releases enough at a time when your plants don't need it or your plants have already taken up enough then then that's going to be susceptible to loss definitely so and are organic and organic farmers necessarily saints then or not when it comes to the idea of of like phosphates and nitrates leaching into surface water i have a sense that a lot of organic farmers assume they're not culprits in that regard. Is that a safe assumption? No, definitely not, especially because, especially phosphorus,

a lot of, I mean, especially manure, like, depends on the organic farmer, but typically, I mean, if they can get their hands on manure, that's a good thing. And manure is really high in phosphorus, and it's an uneven, usually the amount of phosphorus that's in a manure and manure is really high in phosphorus, and it's an uneven... Usually, the amount of phosphorus that's in a manure and the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that's in a manure doesn't really match what the plant needs. So typically, if you were to put on enough manure to match the crop's nitrogen demand,

you would be way exceeding the phosphorus demand. So then you would definitely have extra phosphorus around, which could run off into your surface water. Right. Yeah. Okay. So it's kind of like when I used to be like attempt to be a little sweet on you back in good old school days.

And it was like I would gussy myself up and i would have deodorant on and cologne and typically the deodorant was like a decent application like just about as much as you needed to smell and that was like the nitrogen but the cologne was like the phosphorus where there was way more typically than you needed to um you know for it to work for you. Yeah, totally. Okay. So, so, so where we can be, so, so then how do we reduce, how do we, organic growers or regular growers just reduce the likelihood that we are over, that we are allowing, you know, nitrogen and phosphorus to bleed into surface water and cause problems in the environment? How can you avoid that? cause problems in the environment.

How can you avoid that? It's definitely a little bit trickier with organic. I mean, a typical answer for a conventional grower is you take a soil test before applying, either in the fall or the spring, depending on when you have time and can get it done, you know, and actually see, okay, what's in the soil right now and how much does, and do a little sort of nutrient balance and say, okay, how much does this crop actually need or how much can it possibly take up and then only apply that amount.

But typically people get a little bit nervous, and so they over-apply because, oh, what if this year is a bumper crop? Or, you know, they just don't want to be short. Plus I'd imagine there's a lot of cheapskate, small-scale commercial growers like me and then regular old hobby gardeners who aren't getting the soil test done. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've started to, but my first season I didn't because i was trying to save money and then but that's what in on organic farms it is trickier because your soil test soil tests are you know aimed at conventional farmers

they tell you typically your nitrate may be ammonium but probably not and uh i don't know you have one in front of you like it's it's not very common that they'll actually tell you the organic amount like organic and or total and or total phosphorus or that sort of thing yeah well let me tell you because i do have my recent soil test up and this was i took the test in like late september early october okay and yeah in the in the uh in the uh results here all it talks about is nitrate nitrogen right yeah yeah that's pretty typical and it was high in one the one test i did uh and low in the other test i did but um so so i just sorry i i meant i wanted to do a follow-up

question when when you talked about the the organic farmers adding or any farmers adding manure or manure compost to their soil. So your point was just that you do have to be aware of how much. You can't just assume that you can add as much as you want and it's not going to be doing any harm or leaching or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I didn't really finish on organic farmers so why it's trickier is because you have to factor in that your soil, typically your soil, if you've been building organic matter will have a higher

organic matter content than, well, I shouldn't say that necessarily, but then a conventional soil and so your organic matter will be providing nutrients for the season and also you're applying organic amendments so those will be sort of slowly releasing over the season so you just have to look at really it would come down to sort of looking at recommendations based on organic applications and yeah just actually think about okay how much am I putting on and is this is this too much or do I just think that, oh, you can't put too much on because it's organic, you know? Right. Okay. So inevitably, just, you know, during the season, Claire, I pull out a lot of plant stuff like because, you know,

I grow mixed vegetables. At any one time, I might have 15 to 30 different types of vegetables growing and sometimes a bed is done and i i you know i pull out the plants you know in the case of say kale or other brassicas i may just instead of turning them in i pull them out to compost in a pile right um but sometimes what happens is and often actually you know i have to confess you know they'll get pulled out and then either left in the pathways or piled near the, near the bed and there they'll sit. Let's say they're just kind of left individually, each plant just sitting in a pathway. Um, do I end up losing a lot of good stuff as it, because they just, they don't break down efficiently. And like, do I lose stuff to

the air? Like what happens when I do that? Hmm. Question that question um i honestly don't think you would lose a ton i mean if you did it with if you didn't compost anything on your farm and every single plant you took out you did that too you'd be missing out on the compost you would have created i guess but um in terms of just leaving them on the ground, I actually don't even know where it, I mean, as it slowly broke. I'll be more pointed. Like what about the nitrogen that might otherwise be captured as it breaks down in a compost pile?

Is there more risk that a different breakdown process happens and I lose that to the atmosphere or am I just making that up? I think you might be making that up. But I could be wrong. I have a feeling I've asked this question, well, definitely to myself, but I think to someone else. And I actually can't even remember the answer because I sort of do imagine that as it breaks down and it's just sitting there, that the nitrogen kind of wisps away into the atmosphere. And I mean, you would probably lose some to volatilization, but you would also lose some in your compost pile.

So I don't think it's a huge... If I find that out, I'll get back to you on it though. Yeah, I suppose it's not such a great question for someone who has worked mostly with large growers. I don't imagine that there's prairie farmers who are going and pulling out each plant that they're finished with. So anyway, how about this? We'll just end this way. Is there anything in your regular kind of research and work,

like is there anything you see, any mistakes you see farmers making with regards to these topics on a regular basis, whether it's for small-scale or larger-scale farming? Yeah, I'm trying to think small-scale. I don't see very many small-scale farms. Usually the problem I see on small-scale farms is everyone letting their weeds go to seed.

Large-scale, I mean, definitely in terms of manure is the big one. It just is the reality of the Fraser Valley, there's just so much more, the animals are producing so much more manure than the land base really can hold. And so it's not really an issue of, you know, people saving their manure and wanting to apply it at the right time. It's really the opposite that guys are like trying to find times to spread it and get rid of it. So that's the biggest thing that we see around here is, you know, there's a break in the weather for a day, and even though it's going to rain tomorrow, 50 millimeters,

somebody's out there spreading manure kind of thing. Right. And you are driving by on the Trans-Canada Highway and clicking your tongue. Yeah, exactly. Or you're dying from the stench. Right. But you're used to it, so you're not. And just by way of background for listeners, the Fraser Valley has a very high concentration of dairy and poultry operations,

so there is a lot of poop being produced down there. And I guess even some pork, right? Yeah, not very much much but there is some yeah mostly the dairy and poultry but they're starting i mean they've a lot of the poultry industry has been shipping their their product out of the valley actually their product their end product yeah um i was going to say something i just thought of about the oh you asked about nitrogen losses from your stock that you leave on the ground. The other thing to think about is that, I mean, there's probably not a ton of nitrogen in those.

Like, depending on what the crop is, like, typically because nitrogen is sort of probably going into whatever the fruiting body is of your plant. Yeah, right. Okay. So, like, with broccoli, there'd be a lot in the actual head? Head, yeah. Is that kind of? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Okay, well, yeah, I didn't mention it. It doesn't matter. It also comes up with weeds in general. As I'm weeding, I tend to be lazy, and I like to just leave weeds in the pathways sort of thing and let them break down there. I think that's probably common. Yeah,

I think so too. I think so too. Okay. Well, um, look, I asked some of my guests to recommend a book related to agriculture. Do you want to take a go with that?

Do you have any books to recommend? You know, people like reading books. People like reading books about agriculture. Yeah. Me besides my thesis. Well, the thing is, I think it's safe to assume that listeners have probably already read that. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, something else. Hot topic. Oh, geez. I don't read about agriculture anymore. Any reference books that you still use that you find pretty helpful? Oh, what do i use i oh i still look at the um so properties i can't remember the actual title of it the classic soil science book um i don't i actually lent it to someone so i don't have it in front of me okay well i will after this interview i'll figure out what book you're talking about,

and then I'll either mention that in post-production and add it in, or I'll include it at the ruminant website. Sure. I also read, I used to refer back to the Zeger Ecology textbooks by Gleesman. It's just not relevant as much to the work I'm doing now. Can you spell that name? Gleesman. G-L-I-E S-S-M-A-N

I think. Perfect. Okay, folks, go look up Gleesman. Google Gleesman and you'll find wonderful books to read. Dan County Almanac is a good one. It's more about conservation. Good, inspiring book. I agree. I really like that book one. It's more about conservation. Good inspiring book. I agree.

I really like that book too. Aldo Leopold. Okay. So Claire, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about all this complicated stuff you know because it really is great for us farmers to learn about it. You are welcome. Hopefully some of it made sense. Okay. for us farmers to learn about it. You are welcome. Hopefully some of it made sense. Okay, so that was the original conversation

I had with Claire Sullivan, minus a few extra edits that I conducted this time around. And before I end the show, I want to come back to a segment that I introduced a number of episodes ago. It's called, what's it called? Ruminant Do's and Don'ts? What did I call it, folks?

Ruminant Do's and Don'ts or Homestead Farmers Do's and Don'ts? did i call it folks ruminant do's and don'ts or homestead farm ruminant do's and don'ts i'm not sure but uh occasionally on the show i'm gonna i'm gonna share some do's some recommendations i have based on my own experiences and some don'ts some some some advice uh based on my own failures i think i started with a do and this is the second time i'm doing this and i'm gonna i'm gonna go with another do even though there are plenty of don'ts And this is the second time I'm doing this. And I'm going to go with another do, even though there are plenty of don'ts. Like in the fall, we're going to have a lot of don'ts coming at you.

But it's another do. So this winter, I spent some time at some farming conferences, as you know. And one topic of conversation I heard a few times, just general chatter, you know, at mealtime, but also in some of the seminars that were being offered is the notion, you know, I think at both conferences I was at, the Xerxes Society was attending and giving seminars. And one thing they really push is encouraging beneficial insects on your farm. And I don't even know if I made it to any of the specific seminars, but somehow, I, you know, I guess I heard enough of the chatter to kind of embrace one main idea I heard, which is simply trying to plant a lot more flowers in and around your market garden to try and attract some of the beneficial insects that either are going to increase pollination, that's kind of the most obvious one, but also attracting some of the predatory insects that might bring some benefits to your garden in the form of predating some of the unwanted pests like aphids and the like that inevitably end up in a market garden. So anyway, the idea, as I understood it in the general chatter, was not only to have lots of flowers, but perhaps to think about how

far apart those flowers are spaced and how you might mulch those flowers to create a slightly different habitat for the beetles and the wasps that, uh, that otherwise aren't going to be very happy creating a home in garden beds of vegetables with a lot of bare soil that you're weeding. So one main consideration that I picked up on was that if these flowers are too far away from your crops, they're not going to do you much good. And that ideally, you have, you know, these different beds of flowers every so often to be able to see any kind of benefit. So in the main part of my garden, I have 18 beds, approximately 30 inches wide each bed on four foot centers, meaning 18 inch pathways. So 18 beds wide going for approximately 500 feet. There's not a lot of extra space in there,

but I was really intrigued by this idea. And I also thought, you know, what's the worst that happens? I put in some flowers and I don't get the beneficial insects, or it's very hard to tell whether you get any benefits from these insects. But worst case scenario, you just add a lot of beauty to your garden. And I took it even a step further and thought, if I put mostly edible flowers into the the garden then I can probably end up harvesting and selling some of these flowers to the chefs that I grow vegetables for so even though I don't have a lot of space I decided I was gonna sacrifice a little bit of crop growing space and I added a 19th bed to the garden and I added it right splitting right down the middle so I split

the 18 beds into nine beds below this continuous flower bed and nine beds above and I had to take a tiny bit out of production as a result because I have some other blocks just above these 18 bed blocks so I shrunk that a little bit in order to fit a 19th bed. And the reason I split it down the middle was that was because of the idea that I think I heard about that you don't want these flowers too far away from your crops or you're not going to, you know, you're going to reduce the likelihood that these insects are going to be beneficial to your crops. So the 19th bed went in. It was, you know, it meant 10 or 20 more trays in the nursery this year of various kinds of flowers. I focused on sunflowers, the petals of which are edible.

Bachelor buttons, ditto. Nasturtiums, most of you know that nasturtium flowers are both beautiful and very, very delicious. Some salvia, had never tried that before. And that's also somewhat edible. Not that palatable, but technically edible. And what else did I add? Some zinnias, not really edible, but have you grown zinnias before? They're just so beautiful. They're a

beautiful annual and I grow them every year. And then some marigolds, uh, and of course a few calendula. So, you know, more space in the nursery. That was one trade-off, um, and just more work. And especially because unlike my garden beds, um, we mulch them. We have some old spent hay that wasn't high enough for eating quality for livestock, and it was fairly free of weed seeds. So that's what we chose to mulch with. We mulched the whole bed of flowers for, I didn't get quite 500 feet, 450, let's say. It is beautiful. That's all I can tell you. I don't know if it's doing any good in the garden, but it is absolutely gorgeous. I've taken photos, so there will be photos either as a separate post or in with this episode on the ruminant at theruminant.ca for very soon. I'll get it up on the blog if you want to see, but it's worth it just for how it puts me in a better mood

every time I go in the garden to look at these flowers. One thing I'd change is I would eliminate the sunflowers. I wasn't that concerned about shading from the sunflowers, but I use impact sprinklers like overhead irrigation for these blocks and they're really screwing me up and kind of blocking some of the sprinklers. So I have little patches of dry soil in the garden. I've actually started to knock over these sunflowers and rip them out much to the dismay of some of my staff who really like to see them. Anyway, I won't say much more. Look up Xerces, X-E-R-C-E-S.

Xerces Society has lots of information on this, a lot more technical than I, to be honest, I don't even really know, uh, you know, if there's much to, to these benefits that, that, that, uh, I'm, I'm saying that I heard about at the conferences, but like I say, it's worth it just for how pretty the garden is. I'm now selling some of these flowers, uh, flower heads to, to chefs. Uh, FYI, I think you can get anywhere from 50 to a hundred dollars a pound, a pound uh for this stuff and if that sounds like a ton it's not bad definitely ain't bad but um it's slow to pick and uh it takes a lot to make any kind of substantial weight anyway go check out the photos and you'll see what i mean pretty nice stuff and uh so that's a do i'm gonna i'm gonna keep i'm gonna keep this 19th bed

i'm gonna mulch it and uh and and probably refine which varieties i'm growing but i'm so happy i did it folks try it out next year so that's it i'll let my wife vanessa close out the episode as she normally does with this song she wrote and uh i'll talk to you hopefully next week and if i don't make it with an episode you know why but uh i'll be back at you as soon as I can take care but if we bury ourselves in the woods in the country we're no closer we never have laundry we'll owe nothing to this world of thieves live life like it was meant to be I don't fret honey

I've got a plan to make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be 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