Gotta have a Greenhouse

Sustainable Greenhouse

Greenhouses are a necessity for any farmer that wants to extend the growing season, grow transplants from seeds, or grow plants out of their temperate zones.  Greenhouses can range from complex and permanent to the quick, easy, portable, and cheap.  The greenhouse to the left is a more permanent design.  It has some aspect that are eco-friendly and Sustainable.  The back wall is designed to be built of straw bales.  The bales are extreme insulation.  The wall will help keep the greenhouse from getting to hot in the summer, and it will keep in heat in the winter.  If the wall is covered with an Earthen Plaster it will even radiate heat at night.  The glazing, the clear material laid over the wooden frame, can be made out of several different options.  Personally I have come to like Poly carbonate after doing some research online, but it can become expensive. 

Cheap, Easy, Quick Greenhouse

I will be designing a version of the PVC Greenhouse on the right to begin with.  I will build a more permanent and sustainable greenhouse like the above greenhouse later on.  The PVC Greenhouse I am going to build will have a box frame on the bottom for added support during our stormy spring time season.  I will be able to take these down once the season heats up and they are no longer needed.  Most of my wide rows are designed so that I can spring up one of these hoop houses quickly to deal with cold snaps in the fall.  You can find plenty of free plan designs all over the internet, so google it and tweak one to fit your needs.  I will share my final grand plan with you as it gets designed.  I am learning and building these things as I go so I will share any pitfalls and successes with you.

 

Keep it Green

JP

Look out for CSA Advertisements

Susan was out in Carrollton today and saw a flyer for Farmers Fresh CSA.  This may be the start of the advertising cycle for CSA’s, so keep a look out around you.  The local food movement is growing, but it needs support from everybody.  I looked at this website and I was very excited.  This is like a clearing house for quite a few Farmers in the Carroll County area, and it may be a good way for me to get started along with my Box Buyers.  Patricia, the lady I talked to on the phone, is keen on the idea of getting the farmers together to share ideas and maybe starting a seed sharing program.  I would be very excited to participate in both of these ideas.  The crops here don’t have to be certified organic, but they don’t want any chemical treatments of the produce.  The certified organic label can be expensive to obtain, and that may be a barrier to some farmers including me.  Talk to the people at your local food organizations to see if they practice the same kind of restrictions.  If the local markets require the Farmer’s to keep from using chemicals for pesticides and fertilizers it is just as effective in producing great organic food.  If you are looking for a place to buy fresh food I encourage to seek out the local farmers and farmers markets, and take a few minutes and talk to them.  If you are looking for a place to buy and you live close to Carrol County I encourage you to check these guys out too.  They are friendly, and I hope to send them some produce myself in the spring.

Keep it Green

JP

Amaranth or Quinoa Grain

Amaranth is a super grain.  You may see another grain that is similar to Amaranth in the store called Quinao.  These two are very similar with a just a couple of differences that make Amaranth a better choice.  Amaranth is both a grain and a vegetable.  You can eat the seeds like popcorn, grits, bread, rice, or even bake it into cookies and cakes replacing more than 75% of your flour.  You can eat the leaves like salad greens, spinach, or in stir fry.  The nutritional value for this super grain is off the charts.  The closest thing to it I have found is Floriani Red Flint Corn, which is almost as versatile.  I plan on using both in my CSA.  Amaranth was used by the Aztecs and Incas.  Quinoa is known in India and some South American cultures.  I have been told that Kroger and Publix are both carrying the grain form of Quinoa, and that Kroger might be carrying it in flour form as well.  To get the most use out of this plant I will eventually get a grain mill.  I have my eye on a couple right now, but I’m going to hold out a little longer before I fork out the dough for the mill.  The ones I like come as hand powered, but can be hooked up to a motor.  I think to start supporters of PFFarm CSA will get some Amaranth they can use as popcorn or as a cereal.  They can look forward to when they may receive grain, and flour.  Learn all you can about this super grain, and see how you might be able to work it into your diet.

Jason

Log Beds

We dug trenches beside the planting beds to put the logs in.  The logs will serve a couple of purposes.  They are erosion protection.  They will anchor the vertical growing structures, and they will serve as a place to tuck the newspaper into for ground cover.

Rain Barrels for Water Conservation

Rain Barrel

Water is a very important part of the farm.  Without out water the crops will not grow, and sometimes you can’t just rely on mother nature for time rain.  Rain water collection is the meat and potatoes of Sustainable Agriculture.  The farm does have a well which we can use for irrigation, but I would like to collect as much run off as possible.  The well relies on the water table.  If all the rain that fell on the property stayed on the property then there would be no need for additional water collection.  It is quite evident from looking at the land that water does run off the property.  One of the options is to collect as much rain from the roofs of structures on the farm.  This wont solve all of the run off problems, but why add more water than we have to the problem?

Future Worm Farm and Mushroom Grow Room

Rain Barrels can be made out of several kinds of barrels, but our first one will be made out of the above pictured storage barrel.  One of the great things about this barrel is that the top is easy to remove and easy to cut out.  We will use a four-inch diameter corrugated pipe to connect the barrel to the gutter.  The first structure to get a rain barrel system will be the shed on the right.  We will turn it into a Worm Composting Farm on the left side and a place to grow mushrooms on the right side.  The tin roof is slanted to the front and to the left a little, so the Rain Barrel will be put on the left side.  This will be the first of man rain barrel systems on the farm.  I am planing on having a portable Barrel that can be carried around by the tractor.  We will pull up to the shed to drain its rain barrel into the one on the tractor.  We can then take the water to beds that need watering, and we can hook it up to the soaker hoses in each bed.  Don’t worry if you can’t quite picture all the details yet.  I will be putting together a video series of how all this fits together.  Next week we will be putting the rain barrel together, so come back next week for that video.

Keep it Green

Jason Parrish

Introduction to P. F. Farm

Introducing P. F. Farm.  We are a CSA in Douglasville, and we are just starting.  The video will explain why we are putting together the blog, and introduce you to our composting program.  I hope you enjoy it.

P.S.  The K in NPK fertilizers stands for Potassium.  I think I may have said Calcium in the video.

Keep it Green

Jason Parrish

Marking the Planting Beds

The first planting bed will be for the Strawberries.

Today at the Farm we pulled up some downed trees into the garden area.  These logs serve a few purposes.  The first is to break the flow of any runoff into the planting beds.  These planting beds are planted on a slight slope.  We are putting in a lot of effort to build up the soil in these planting beds, and we don’t want a heavy rain to wash away any of our precious soil.

The second purpose of the logs is to give structure to the beds, and remind all of us to stay off of the soil.  In order for these plants to grow to their true potential the soil in the beds needs to stay loose and pliable.  This will ensure that air can get into the soil, and the micro-organisms, that work hard to give the roots of the plants what they need, stay healthy.  The wide row method we are using has beds four feet wide.  A person can comfortably reach in at least two feet to tend to a plant or harvest produce, so a four-foot wide row allows us to reach all of the plants while staying on the outside of the planting beds.  These old logs will also weigh down the newspaper we are using for weed cloth.  The newspaper lets water through but not the weeds.  We will put mulch on top of the newspaper, and the whole system will be come a cycle.  The newspaper, mulch, and even the logs will eventually decompose adding nutrients back into the soil for future crop.

The last purpose for these logs is to act as an anchor for supporting structure we build to grow vine crops vertically instead of on the ground.  Crops such as Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Beans, Peas, Watermelons, and even Pumpkins will be grown on a nylon mesh stretched over electrical conduit frames.  For this to work these now Tall crops must be on the south side of the beds so they do not cast shadows on the other crop in the beds.  The bed in the column of beds we laid out today will be for Strawberries, so no anchor supports will be needed.  We used the larger logs on the first two beds so they would be able to divert most of the water.  Now with the South of the bed being the most important to have an anchoring log, we can move to having just one log per bed.

There are many more beds to be laid out, but we got four of the laid out today.  These log are fairly easy to move, so getting the tractor in to till and turn the soil wont be a problem.  As you can tell there is a lot of work left to do before the first seeds go in to the ground.  I’ll keep you posted on all the details.  Till next time.

Keep it Green

Jason Parrish

Chainsaw Work

Today I cleared some of the dead and little seedling trees out of the back of the plot.  The trees that are there will make a great place to grow Romain, Broccoli, and other cooler crops in the summer.  We pulled some trees that have been down a while from another part of the farm to the planting beds.  These straight old trees will make prefect bed rails for the planting beds.  They will help keep runoff water from washing into the bed and taking good soil out of the beds.  The are pretty easy to roll, so I can move them if I need to get the tractor in to work the beds.  They will also give me a place to anchor the climbing structures for the Tomatoes, Bean, Peas, Cucumbers, Pumpkins, and Watermelons.  I will add a picture of the logs later.  It has been a long day hard-working day, but I enjoyed it.

 

Jason Parrish

Gaecoscapes is now PFFarm

I am moving off of gaecoscapes.tumblr.com. We have been fortunate enough that some friends have let us use their land to start our farm, so I’m going to start the Farm Blog that I wanted to do in the first place. I can’t wait to start making videos, and to show you what we have been doing out there. I am very excited about the possibilities for next year. Right now we are working on a business plan, so that maybe I can get some funding through grants or even a Small Business Loan. I can’t wait to make some videos of things to do with the Veggies we produce. We will be doing videos on building rain barrels as well. This is going to be a great ride. I look to putting a lot of content up here in the new year. The next post should be a video from Parrish Family Micro Eco-Farm.

Jason

Hello world!

I am moving off of gaecoscapes.tumblr.com.  We have been fortunate enough that some friends have let us use their land to start our farm, so I’m going to start the Farm Blog that I wanted to do in the first place.  I can’t wait to start making videos, and to show you what we have been doing out there.  I am very excited about the possibilities for next year.  Right now we are working on a business plan, so that maybe I can get some funding through grants or even a Small Business Loan.  I can’t wait to make some videos of things to do with the Veggies we produce.  We will be doing videos on building rain barrels as well.  This is going to be a great ride.  I look to putting a lot of content up here in the new year.  The next post should be a video from Parrish Family Micro Eco-Farm.

Jason