The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.47: Listener Submissions

Episode Date: April 23, 2015

All my nagging is starting to pay off! I've started to receive submissions from listeners concerning good ideas for their farm and garden that they want to share with you. This episode: why you shouldn't use a used washing machine to spin your salad greens, a cool farm book sharing service, and your host's approach to preparing succession plantings in the nursery.

The article came out of the idea that I know a lot of people who do use machines and I know a lot of people who've used machines. It made me think, let's get that message out there because I think it's something that probably needs to be addressed. That's Chris Theroux, a sprouts grower who recently joined me on the phone to tell me why he thinks using a used washing machine to spin your greens dry is, well, it's gross. This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. TheRuminant.ca is a website dedicated to sharing good ideas for farmers and gardeners. You can find all sorts of good content there. Some essays I've written and book reviews and photo-based posts about other farmers' ideas for your farm, as well as this podcast. about other farmers' ideas for your farm, as well as this podcast. I'm on Twitter at ruminantblog, you can email me at editor at ruminant.ca,

and I'd love to hear your ideas for other farmers and gardeners to record them for this podcast. More on that in just a minute. Alright, let's go. Hi folks. This is an episode I've been looking forward to releasing. For a while now, I've been encouraging listeners to submit their ideas that they think that other farmers and gardeners would like to hear about. And after a number of episodes in which you've heard me cajole you all about making submissions, I've started to receive a few. So that's really exciting for me and I hope it'll be good for you too. This episode, I've got a couple such ideas as well as one of my own that I'm going to share. So I won't waste too much time. Although I do want to say

that I would love to receive your submissions. And the way you can do it is as follows. You can email me editor at the ruminant.ca and let me know about your idea and a good way to communicate with you. I can call you or Skype with you and we can make a recording of you sharing your idea. You can text me 250-767-6636 and let me know that you have an idea to share and I can call you back and we can again do a short recording. Or you can simply make a recording at a voicemail I have set up at my Skype number. So if you call 310-734-8426, you'll get a voicemail and you can just share your idea. If at this point, you're not sure what kind of ideas I'm looking for, well, hopefully this episode will give you a sense sense of that so i won't say too much more i'll

get started with chris thoreau who technically didn't approach me with a submission i read an article that he wrote for the canadian organic grower magazine that was really interesting particularly because the topic that chris was writing about people who use used washing machines as a spinner to spin their salad greens dry. Well, I'm one of those people. So I found his argument really compelling as we'll get into in our chat. So here's Chris Theroux of foodpeddlers.ca. So Chris Theroux, you recently wrote a great article for the Canadian Organic Grower magazine, TCOG magazine, in which you argued that using a used washer on the spin cycle to spin your greens dry is gross. Using a used washer is gross. Do I have that right?

Yes, that would be a good summary, I think, yes. It's a great article. People need to check it out. But can you just give us the background? You went to go and pick, so a lot of people when they want to spin their salad greens and other types of greens, microgreens, dry, have figured out that a great way to do that is to use the spin cycle of a washing machine. And so you went to pick up a used washing machine and I'll let you take over the story. Yeah, well, like every farmer, I tend to work on a budget and I'm looking for a good deal. And obviously buying secondhand is a great way to save some money. So I had gone into our local appliance recycling shop here in Vancouver and

told the guy what I was after and I want a washing machine and this is what I want to do with it and he kind of paused and looked at me as if I was almost joking. He said, well, you're not going to put food in a washing machine, are you? I said, well, yeah. I'm going to get in there and I'll clean out the drum and clean out behind

it and stuff and sanitize it. He's like, no, no, no. You can't do that. Do you have any idea what people put into their washing machine? And he just gives me like a little 30 second rant and it just clicked. It's like, yeah. And I started thinking of some of the stuff I put in my washing machine. And so it just kind of dawned on me. Like, it just became so obvious.

And the article came out of the idea that I know a lot of people who do use machines and I know a lot of people who do use machines and I know a lot of people use used machines. So it just, it made me think, let's get that message out there because I think it's something that probably needs to be addressed. And, uh,

it worked on me, man. It's, uh, it's in my budget this year. I'm going to be buying a new washer. I'm actually very excited now that I've wrapped my head around that. I've noticed that I realized that,

uh, you know, with, by buying a new one, I can buy one like the one I acquired originally Chris had one of those central kind of big uh I don't even know what you call it but like this this big agitator the agitator was was in there but you can buy ones with no agitator that's just this massive drum that's perfect for spinning green so I'm going to spend whatever i'm going to spend seven eight nine hundred bucks probably and get a really good a really good tool and one that didn't have people washing their kids reusable diapers in it at some point yeah exactly well what we used is a we found one with a stainless steel drum no agitator and it's an apartment sized machine

so it's relatively small so i can pick it up and move it quite easily. And within that, we can spin about six pounds of microgreens, so a decent amount, and we paid $300 for it with tax included. So going a little smaller saved us a lot of money. Right. Well, so then obviously there's some options out there uh so was it hard to find one with a stainless steel drum there there were a lot of different ones out there so a lot of them do have a uh like a plastic drum right a lot of stuff being plastic so there were some stainless

steel options uh so i did have to choose my model carefully, but there were a number of good ones with stainless steel. The other thing that I really took into consideration is a lot of washing machines, like a lot of equipment and clothing these days, is treated with antibacterial colloidal silver or micro, I can't remember the term right now, but basically these micro elements that are antibacterial colloidal silver or micro, I can't remember the term right now, but basically these micro elements that are antibacterial. And that was another thing that started to weigh on me was like, well, do I want this, you know, around food? I have no idea if this stuff is approved for food use. And so I had to be sure to find one that was just a stainless steel drum and didn't have any fancy chemicals or antibacterial agents on it. So that would be another thing I would keep in mind when looking for a machine. Right on.

Well, if people want any more details, they can check out your article. I'd like to say it's in the current issue, though it's taken me so long to connect with you that it may have been. It was the winter issue, I believe, of TCOG. So they can check that out. And it is the winter issue, I believe, of TCOG, so they can check that out. And it is actually now online. So the online version features the article right on the cover there, so it should be easy to find. Okay, well, I'll make sure there's a link to that from theruminant.ca.

Chris, you have graciously come on to talk about this. Do you want to give a plug for anything, your company or your website, anything like that? Well, we're the Food Peddlers. We're thefoodpeddlers.ca. But, you know, I think the plug is for just continually improving what we do as small-scale farmers. And, you know, we're growing food for the public, and I think this is just one way we remain really accountable. And, you know, it feels good to buy new equipment sometimes. So I do encourage it when it's appropriate. Yeah, no i i completely agree and uh thanks for your contribution chris

yeah my my pleasure so i think chris makes a pretty good argument and that's coming from a guy who spent 40 on a used washer, and I've been using that washer for the last couple seasons to spin my greens. And I have to admit, I was, I had, and I have to admit, you know, at times I wondered about whether this was really a good way to go, given that it was a used machine, but I was mainly just, I stuffed feelings down i kind of you know was in denial about it chris has inspired me to to rethink that and so in my budget this year i've got uh i've got some money set aside for for

a new washing machine with a brand new spinner in it so uh before the harvest season gets going i'm gonna make a purchase and I think I'll feel a lot better about it. And I really think that there's some, the newer machines have some better options. So I'm really looking forward to it. If you want to check out the article, I will put a link to the blog post going along with this episode at theruminant.ca, but you can also find it by googling Chris Thoreau and TCOG magazine or the Canadian Organic Grower magazine. Chris has also shared a video of his machine in action and I'll be putting that up on the blog as well if you want to check that out.

So next up, I recently received an email from a listener named scott who wanted to share some information about a really cool service that exists at least for canadians that i think a lot of canadian farmers don't realize exists i knew it exists but i had never actually used it and i'll probably just let scott take it from here but i do really quickly want to say that but I had never actually used it. And I'll probably just let Scott take it from here, but I do really quickly want to say that he's going to be talking about a service offered by Canadian Organic Growers, which is a really great nonprofit that produces the magazine that Chris Theroux wrote in about the used versus new washer.

It's also an organization whose board I sit on, so I had nothing to do with scott writing to talk about the organization it just kind of happened out of the blue so so here's scott to share his idea for for the rest of you so i guess just kind of the tip that i was uh sending in is that the canadian organic growers association has a free library with, I don't know, I think 1,500 titles on agriculture-specific stuff. And it is free shipping anywhere in Canada, both send and return, and it doesn't cost you anything to join the library,

and you don't have to be a member of COG. So you just send them an email and tell them what books you want and they'll send it to you. And then when you're done, you ship them back in the same envelope. And so it's a good free resource that's out there. So Scott, have you been using the library at all? Yeah, so I have been. I've been using it maybe for about a year now and sometimes I will just get it to check out books that I'm interested in, and then if I think that I want to add it to my collection or some other key text that I think will be good, then I'll go ahead and buy it.

But it's nice. Like, for example, I have the Richard Wiswell's The Market Business Handbook, and had that out for a couple of months, and then I ended up buying it later. But it was handy to have as a resource. So, yeah. Well, that's really, yeah, it's cool. It's funny. It's really funny because I've known about the library for a long time and never tried it.

And it does strike me as a great way to either trial a book before you buy, or there's a certain category of farming book where you just kind of need to read it like one time and then you really don't need it again. And so that's another, I guess, another great use of that service. Yeah, and I think they also have like a bunch of back issues of Acres USA as well that you can access. And they're really super relaxed there too. So like there's a couple of times that I've needed books for a couple of months and I just kind of emailed them and said, Hey, like I'm going to be, it's going to take me a little longer. And they're like, yep, sure. No problem. Thanks for letting us know. And then I just kind of mail it back when I needed to.

Cool. And, um, what kind of, what's the turnaround time? Like, like you make a request, how long does it take the book to show up? Uh, probably like a week. Okay. And then do they not send you another one until you've sent the current one back? So when I've done orders, I don't think I've ever ordered books concurrently, but I've ordered like four or five books at a time, and they send it all at once. And then I'd send them all back at once. Right, right. That's really cool.

I'm so glad you phoned in and I should say in full disclosure that I'm on the board of COG but that has nothing to do with this little segment. You contacted me out of the blue with the idea and I was so glad you reminded me and actually, like I said, I had never used it. So it's interesting to talk to someone who's making use of the service. Yeah, like I had known about it for a long time too, and then I'm like, oh, maybe I should just check it out because I didn't realize that it was free shipping all across Canada both ways. I thought that, oh, maybe they'd ship it out to me

and I'd have to pay postage back or something like that. But then they send you a return address that you just tape back on the envelope that they give you and you give it back to them. So people can find out more by Googling Canadian Organic Growers, COG, and you can find their website, and there's that service as well as some other great resources on that site. Scott Humphreys, thanks a lot. Can you tell us while you're on the phone a little bit about your farm?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the name of the farm is Ben Plough Farm. We have been kind of working the land up for the past couple of years, but this is our first full-fledged growing season in eastern Ontario. We did do some urban farming in Toronto through Fresh City Farms, but this is kind of our first year in eastern Ontario. Does it feel really weird moving from the small plot urban context to the one you're in now? Yeah, it's kind of a totally different headspace because we're moving on to my dad's land, which is 100 acres, and we've kind of got one acre set aside. And we're used to dealing with like a couple thousand square feet as opposed to 43,000 square feet.

So it's just a different kind of idea in terms of planning the acreage. And, you know, the type of planning that we're doing this year, we're actually not doing that much succession planting, so that's kind of a different thing. So it'll be interesting to manage that much space, and of course there's obviously more weeding and more field work to do. Well, Scott, thanks again for sharing the idea, and yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing it with everyone, so it was good of you to write. Great. Well, thank you very much, Jordan. All right, so to close out the episode, I thought I'd share an idea with you since I'm always trying

to convince you to send your ideas into me. And so I was thinking about that and I realized that I've come up with a cool system for succession planting for some of my crops here in my market garden. So I'm going to talk about that. Since year one of our farm, Vanessa and I have used soil blocks on the farm in the nursery. So many of you will be familiar with those. Unlike using traditional garden trays, 10 by 20 trays with different sizes of plugs in them, we use these special presses you can buy. You can get them through Johnny's, you can get them through pottingblocks.com and a number of other places that you use to create densely packed freestanding blocks of soil with the high moisture content. And you plant straight into them, they're freestanding, and then the plant grows right in them, and then they have a few purported benefits. They air prune so you don't get root wrap or root binding like you do often in traditional seed trays. But probably the coolest benefit is that you can just take these straight out of whatever tray they're in and pop them right into the soil without disturbing the roots.

So they tend to adapt really quickly to the soil when you put them in. So I feel like I'm going to be talking mainly to people who are aware of these and who have rejected them out of hand or have tried them and just not had great results and we certainly took a long time to figure out how to use soil blocks really effectively there's a bit of a learning curve to it for sure but even if you don't want to use soil blocks or soil blocking equipment as your as your main way of producing seedlings, here's something I think you should try. Get yourself one of the blockers that presses about 20 blocks at a time, and

there's different sizes, but anyway, your blocks are going to be approximately one and three quarter inches cubed or two inches cubed, somewhere in there. You can get blockers that'll make blocks that big and they'll press out 20 at a time. Build your trays so that they can hold, I don't know, three presses of that blockers, which means you can hold 60 blocks in one tray. And here's what you can do with them. Every single week, starting about now all the way through September, I will plant the same set of trays over and over and over again each week. So right now for me, what that looks like is I do two trays of scallions and into each block, I put about six to eight scallion seeds. So two trays means for me, that's 60 per tray. So I have 120 blocks that have each have six to

eight scallion seeds in them. Each block, once it gets transplanted out, turns into essentially a scallion bunch that when it's ready to harvest, I just yank it straight out of the ground and it's a bunch all ready to go. I do the same for cilantro. Cilantro usually gets between two and four seeds per block and that results in a bunch of cilantro. I do it for dill, same thing. I do it for bok choy. If it's small bok choy, I might put two or three bok choy in a block. Otherwise, I'll just, if it's a larger bok choy, I'll do one seed to a block. I do it for baby fennel. Okay, so in that case, I'll put two to three seeds a block and I'll plant that out and end up with three, two to three mini fennel heads. And one reason I do that is in my very hot climate, I have a hard time getting fennel to bulb out really large.

So I ended up selling it as baby fennel, which my chef customers love anyway. You get the idea. And you might be thinking, well, I could do the same thing in my 10 by 20 trays with different plug sizes. And it's true. But I think that for these succession plantings,

there's a good argument to be made for these plantings being especially, especially benefiting from the fact that you're not disturbing the root mass as you, as you transplant them. So you get really quick turnaround and they lend themselves well to these grouping of seeds, you know, putting six or eight scallion seeds in or two to four cilantro seeds. As for how to make a good soil blocking mix, if you're brand new to it, it's pretty simple. I used to get kind of complicated with the recipes that I found online, but I've found on the advice from other growers that it you can keep it really simple currently i'm using sunshine organic potting mix they have different types of mix i i really i'm really partial to mix number five and i put about half of that sunshine mix and up to half of a of a really

high quality compost that we produce on the farm from horse manure. And I find that that makes a perfectly fine mud. The learning curve, part of the learning curve involves getting the moisture right, and you generally need more moisture than you think. It's a real wet mud that you're working with when you're pressing. But if you can get the system down, it's just a great efficient way to keep just weekly succession plantings going for a few crops that when you add it up can add a substantial amount to your weekly income. So I'll try and include some photos in the post that goes along with this episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode comprised of short ideas from various farmers and I hope

you'll consider submitting your own just think of something you're doing in your farm or garden that is going well for you that is producing income or that is is producing good stewardship or whatever and think about whether maybe a lot of farmers don't don't don't know about that if you have an idea like that i would love to phone you and talk about it or have you record it. So one more time, you can text me 250-767-6636. And I'll I can phone you back and we can record a short conversation. You can email me editor at the ruminant.ca and I can call you in that case as well. Or you can leave a voicemail at my Skype number, 310-734-8426. So thanks a lot, folks.

I'll be back at you next week with a regular long-form interview. And I've got a few recorded right now, including one with Wisconsin farmer Randy Cutler, all about good strategies for fencing in livestock, as well as a really cool conversation with a permaculturalist in Australia called Colin Seiss and he talks all about a very innovative no-till cropping system that he uses on his very large ranch there. So you have a lot to look forward to and this week I'm just going to let the outro music live on its own since some of you have been asking about who the singer is and where you can listen to it. This is my wife, Vanessa Samur.

She wrote this song. Right now, you can't find this song anywhere else online, although you can find some other songs Vanessa has written if you Google Vanessa Samur, S-A-M-U-R, and MySpace. Have a good week, everybody. Today I learned I don't need anything to live on Except for a little old you I've met a whole army of weasels

A legion of leeches Trying to give me the screw 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. Oh, 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 braces. 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. Ba-ba-ba-da-ba-ba-ba Ba-ba-ba-da-da-da to me