OUR FARM COULD NOT OPERATE WITHOUT DOING THIS!
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- čas přidán 2. 02. 2024
- One of the most important jobs I perform on the farm takes place in the winter. In this video we will briefly discuss the importance of planning ahead and I will show my spreadsheets that I have used over the last 25 years to help me know when to seed, how much to seed, how often to seed and where the plants will be planted.
If you do a video on laying plastic this year could you share some tips that you have learned over the years of working with biodegradable plastic? Picking up plastic has to be my least favorite job would like to make the switch to biodegradable but I have no experience working with it. Glad to see you back to making videos always learn something from you.
Absolutely! With the stuff we use its not much different than laying with regular plastic. I dispise lifting plastic and I know all my employees dread it too, not to mention the disposal aspect of it. Feel free to email me for more info or if you want to know the brand we are using. jason@wishwellfarms.com
I will be growing rupp sweet corn and pumpkins this year.
Awesome, They have some great stuff!
I absolutely love the layout and setup u use for your field production. It seems to b one of the more efficient ways to go about setting up field production.
We have been gardening for years now, with variable success, but we very much enjoy it. So, 2 years ago, we decided to change our careers and move into a more farmers market type farm. Not there yet, but hopefully next year, we will b planting our first 1 acre plot. And, without even knowing it, I've planned out our feilds and they basicly mimic how yours r set up. Only difference is our long term layout will b small (5 acre plots) sections. We r limited to land size and anytjing we can find totals about 40 acre parcels.
I've been doing small scale testing over the past couple of years (about a 27th of an acre) using systems that we will use in larger scale, drip lines, bio mulch, which I love, and fertilizer rates. I find the biggest issue is fertilizer. I haven't had any success with my fertilizer program yet. But this year, I was able to get my hands on commercial grade bulk products from my local fertilizer producer. Now it's just figuring out the proper rates and timing.
Do u do multiple applications of fert throughout the growing year or is it mostly just one big spread before planting. Do u use any types of liquid fertilizer on your fields or is it just granular.
It works fine for us but I'm sure every farm has their own unique layout that works best for them. I grew my operation very slowly over a 25 year period and learned a lot of valuble lessons along the way. The best information I found out there to help me was going to Trade Shows/conferences, these were invaluable and I met many growers over the years that gladly shared information about their own farms....I was like a sponge when I was starting out and went to 2-3 shows each year for like a decade and learned soooo much! This was before CZcams so I didn't really have any other options othere than this and trial and error.
I'm sure you are learning a lot as you go and mistakes will be made along the way and doing this on a small scale is the best way while learning everything you need to know. I've used liquid fertilizers for many years and still do as my starter in my water wheel transplanter tanks and in my corn and bean planter. The dry granular is just easier for me to spread before laying plastic or before planting corn and beans and pumpkins. I normally put out like 150lb or potash and 150lb of MAP or DAP in early spring on fields that show to be low on soil test and then where the plastic is going I also put on 300Lb to the acre of amonium sulfate (a much less volatile form of N that urea) on right before laying plastic and it seems to stick around pretty well for most of the growing season. Nitrogen for corn is put on twice split between broadcast with the herbicide and sidedressed when about a foot tall.
There is so much to know and learn about soil science and biology but for me eventually I just got tired of trying to learn and improve and just do what works for me. Farming is not a passion for me like it was for about 15 years, now its just a means to provide a living and I would probably do something else if I could find something that could pay well and be flexible but don't know what that would be, so until then, I guess I'm a vegetable farmer haha. I'm still hopeful that it can provide a decent retirement income for me when I can't farm anymore, or when I don't want to do it anymore, which is coming quickly, because i'm 50 and ready to pass this on to the next generation or find someone else interested in running it....I'm getting burnt out on farming and each year I find myself eliminating crops I don't like to grow and downsizing to make my life simpler. Maybe I should become a consultant instead, I don't know.
Sorry for the long winded reply. Glad to help you anyway I can...I enjoy sharing my experiences.
I bought 10,000 bolt sweet corn based on your earlier video. Can’t wait to try it. Do you have a sweet corn spray schedule?
Bolt is pretty amazing sweet corn, the cold soil vigor is out of this world! Last year I had seed in the ground during a week of 40 degree rain and it still popped right up and gave me a perfect stand! And the eating quality is superb, especially for an early variety. Just don't forget to isolate it from other varieties that are standard, sugar enhanced, or triple sweets...sH2's must be planted away from them like 500 ft minimum to prevent cross pollination.
Are you refering to weed control or insect control spraying?
@@wishwellfarms
Insect control
Yes my main corn is a syngenta corn remedy. It has bug resistance and doesn’t need to be sprayed as much. I am wondering what you do for insects on Bolt. Mostly ear worms. I am planting bolt as early corn with my tomatoes so probably will put it on plastic. It will be half mile from my other corn.
@@chrispeebles3846 I just spray perm up 3.2 EC which contains 3.2 pounds permethrin per gallon once per week. I used to use the moth traps to monitor the populations but now I just spray everything that has newly silked out with three weekly sprays.
If you like the attribute 2 corn like remedy I would highly recommend trying Matriarch, it is fantastic! Much, much better than Patriarch and Remedy in my opinion. Remedy can perform poorly in stressed conditons sometimes too.
how do you control mildew and white mold ?thanks
on our greenhouse tomatoes I do nothing except keep the humidity down and circulate fresh air all day long...we've never had any mold. In the field we do get blight from time to time and that is hard to control. If conditions are favorable for disease we will spray a fungicide to try and prevent it but once you have it and see it it's often too late. Oxidate does a decent job at killing/controlling it if trying to stay organic.
You mentioned your getting out of pumpkins. Can I ask why?
Several reasons;
1. We are going to be closing down our home farm market because sales are so slow for us in October, so not really worth all the effort to sell pumpkins for 5-6 weeks. We do 95% of our business selling Produce May through September at farmers markets.
2. October is our favorite month to RV camp, backpack and kayak and if I’m home running the pumpkin operation we miss out on making these memories.
3. Nearly all my help to harvest and sell pumpkins is back in high school or college by then and not available and each year is getting tougher and tougher to find good help.
4. My aging father can no longer harvest our thousand acres of corn and beans and sometimes I need to be available to jump in and help my brother. If I’m harvesting and selling pumpkins, I am never available.
At this point in my career being 50 years old and growing pumpkin since 1999, I just feel like I’ve had enough, but if the next generation wants to start it back up someday that’s fine but it won’t involve me.
@@wishwellfarms I get all that. I bought some seed and planning to sell some pumpkins this fall. Just glad you didn’t say it is a terrible non profit business.
If I understood correctly you said you plant most things your planning on biodegradable mulch, except tomatoes. Why do you choose to plant tomatoes on plastic as opposed to biodegradable?
so the biodegradable mulch is basically the same when laying it in the field and when planting on it. The biggest difference is that you don't have to lift it at the end of the season because it breaks down and just dissapears on its own. The problem with it is that it doesn't last as long and will allow weeds to start emerging through the plastic where its breaking down and we don't want that on a long season crop such as tomatoes (they are transplanted in mid May and harvested until mid Oct. sometimes) The degradable is better for shorter crops that may be planted several times like zucchini or cucumber or melons.
@@wishwellfarms
If you were planting pumpkins, would white or black mulch be better and would you use plastic or biodegradable?
@@chrispeebles3846 I've grown pumpkins on black plastic before and they did really well...they just got really dirty because many of them will grow off the plastic and on the dirt. I have never tried white and have never seen it used on other farms either. I woul probably use biodegradable because the pumpkin vine canopy will pretty much be covering everything by the time the plastic starts degrading so no real benefit to using traditional plastic just so it will last longer. Yes, you have more upfront expense in plastic but no expense lifting the plastic at the end of the season which is always a win for me! Hope that helps.
@@wishwellfarms
Thank you