{"id":5281,"date":"2014-10-13T12:27:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T12:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5281"},"modified":"2016-04-08T12:30:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T12:30:04","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-al-october-13th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-al-october-13th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer Al : October 13th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Farming with Fungi<\/h4>\r\nDear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nThis week our focus has been on the many re-plants we have to do this coming winter. We\u2019ll\u00a0replant 1500-2000 trees in January, but now, in the fall, when the ground is dry, is when we prepare the\u00a0soil.\r\n\r\nThere is a problem with \u2018re-plants\u201d. It actually has a name in the scientific community of Ag\u00a0research...they call it the \u201creplant syndrome\u201d. I think they use the word \u201csyndrome\u201d because no one\u00a0actually knows what causes it. I\u2019ve experienced it here many times over the years; a well-established\u00a0tree dies for some reason, (usually gopher damage), so we remove it and re-plant a tree of the same\u00a0variety the following winter but no matter how much TLC we give it (watering, fertilizing and weed\u00a0control) it just sits there and will not grow.\r\n\r\nSo this year, especially since we have so many trees to re-plant, I decided on a new approach. I\u00a0got together with Christophe, our \u201cmad-about-compost\u201d guy, to come up with a plan. We came up with\u00a0a three-pronged approach; apply thermophilic compost, vermicompost and compost tea directly into\u00a0the re-plant holes.\r\n\r\nThis long, costly process began with me identifying and flagging which trees are to be removed,\u00a0which I did weeks ago. Then I called in our amazing back hoe operator, Ron, who drove up and down the\u00a0rows removing the trees by digging them up, roots and all. This took over two weeks because the trees\u00a0are scattered throughout all 120 cares of our orchards.\r\n\r\nSo finally, we now had open spaces of freshly dug soil to replant into. Christophe and I decided\u00a0to put 2, full, 5 gallon buckets (about 30 lbs per bucket) of thermophilic compost, then, a half bucket of\u00a0vermicompost, followed by a drenching of compost tea into each hole.\r\n\r\nWe had to spring into action, and as this required lots of manpower. I enlisted the tree-team,\u00a0led by Antonio, to help the ground team haul heavy buckets up and down each row with our harvest\u00a0carts and dumping compost in the exact space to be planted. This dusty work was done this week with\u00a0temperatures soaring into the 90\u2019s, but everyman was up to the task, with Antonio shouting out orders\u00a0and directing traffic, and coordinating by cell-phone with Humberto, our tractor driver, where to drop\u00a0the next load of compost. I want to give a special word of thanks to my amazing team of men for the\u00a0accomplishing this monumental task of spreading 60 tons of dusty compost by hand, precisely where it\u00a0was needed!\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, the compost tea was brewing from Thursday morning in order to be used\u00a0immediately after the vermicompost would be applied. The tea needs to be used within hours of having\u00a0finished brewing, which is its most biologically active stage of life. Christophe analyzed it to determine\u00a0its quality before announcing, \u201cIt\u2019s ready!\u201d and this time he added, \u201c...And use it quickly; it\u2019s full of\u00a0protozoa!\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd so Friday, we concluded the week long process by applying the 1\u20442 bucket of vermicompost\u00a0onto the thermophilic compost and directly after that, the freshly made compost tea, to saturate the\u00a0compost and pull the nutrients of all into the soil.\r\n\r\nWhy all this extra work? This detailed hard labor? It\u2019s all about the soil; there\u2019s a whole\u00a0community of biology in the soil supporting tree roots capacity to absorb water, and nutrients, while\u00a0fending off pathogenic microbes. We believe that the fungi and the rest of the microbes, are key to\u00a0overcoming the replant syndrome.\r\n\r\nThe soil will have a good 4 months before we re-plant in the winter and it will be another 9\u00a0months to a year before we will see if our plan works. We\u2019ll keep you posted!\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\"Signature","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Farming with Fungi Dear CSA Members, This week our focus has been on the many re-plants we have to do this coming winter. We\u2019ll\u00a0replant 1500-2000 trees in January, but now, in the fall, when the ground is dry, is when we prepare the\u00a0soil. There is a problem with \u2018re-plants\u201d. It actually has a name in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1nb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5283,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281\/revisions\/5283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}