Hey Growers,

I know. I know. There are an insane number of free—or not so free—online workshops and conferences and webinars and courses and so on this season. Even staying home, it’ll be impossible to attend them all. But, here’s one we wanted to bring to your attention you may have missed from past podcast guest Helen Atthowe of Veganic Agriculture. If you’re new ‘round here, you can check out her episode below and this primer we posted about her and her late husbands absolutely amazing work. Here’s an expert:

Managing Ecological Relationships on Farms
By: Helen Atthowe, Carl Rosato of Woodleaf Farm
1. Diversify soil food web with crop & ground cover diversity.
2. Disturb soil as little as possible; create year-round “refuges”.
3. Grow a living root year-round & feed the “rhizosphere”.
4. Keep soil covered with as much plant diversity as possible.
5. Add organic residues regularly, not all at once in the spring.
6. Focus on slow-release, plant-based Carbon fertilizer amendments rather than fast-release Nitrogen fertilzers.
7. Recycle rather than import “mined” nutrients.
8. Selective fertilization; avoid fertilizing the whole field.
9. Selective weeding: choose ground cover; chop & drop “weeds”.
10. Maintain or create wild habitat as close to crops as possible.

We’ll let Helen take it from here…

Hello farming and save-the-world friends:

I am working with the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada to present a free 6-week Zoom workshop series—Janurary through March—about how my late husband and I developed our present reduced & no-till, closed-system, plant-based, organic farming methods over the past 35 years on our farms in Montana, California, and now in Oregon. Here are the links if you are interested:

January 27, Session 1 - Soil Building to Eliminate Brought-In Fertility
FREE registration [click here] required
In this first session, we learn from Helen how a “soil organic matter system” based on the ten ecological principles for managing relationships rather than just crops can be created. We will learn how to evolve away from tillage and off-farm materials as fertilizers. The goal is a high carbon, low-nitrogen, grow-our-own-fertilizer system using living mulches and hay mulch.

February 3, Session 2 - Habitat Building to Eliminate Insect & Disease Spraying
FREE registration [click here] required
In this second session, we learn from Helen how to integrate our “soil organic matter system” into creating habitat for biological control organisms. The goal is to maintain natural enemy abundance and diversity as close to the crops as possible. An optimized habitat management strategy will enhance below-ground microorganisms and above-ground natural enemies that suppress crop insect and disease pests.

February 10, Session 3 - Living/Hay Mulches, Cover Crops & Green Manures

Sessions 4-6 will be posted ~13 days in advance, please follow us on Eventbrite to receive notifications

February 24, Session 4 - When & When Not to Till: On-Farm Research

March 3, Session 5 - Plant-Based Fertilizers as Key to Soil & Habitat-Building

March 10, Session 6 - Techniques to Keep a Growing Root in the Soil Year-Round