This is part
of a much longer article, "Summer Hoophouses"
by Steve and Carol Moore, that originally appeared
in the May 2005 issue of Growing for Market:
Some people use hoophouses just
for winter greens. "There are many additional
uses for these structures that can help to offset
the economic and environmental costs of building
them. For those who are only using them for winter
greens … some of the benefits of summer use
are:
- Higher yield of tropical crops (tomato, eggplant,
pepper, etc.)
- Enhanced seed production (used for climate control
and isolation)
- Spread labor load on rain days
- Spread capital cost (economic and environmental)
over a longer productive period
- Maintain or improve soil for winter production
- Moderate climate irregularities (hail, wind,
rain)
- Disease and insect control
- Cure winter squashes, pumpkins and sweet potatoes
Here in Southeast Pennsylvania
(zone 6) we have had rain and cold during the past
two summers. This has made it almost impossible
to field-grow nice-colored bell peppers and tomatoes,
with all the blights and assorted diseases that
accompany these weather conditions. Hoophouses can
change all that and we can get a two-month head
start in our unheated houses. … We see an
even greater advantage with the hoophouses, for
crops seem to accelerate at a much faster rate.
Additionally, we have experienced wide swings in
weather, with our latest frost ever (on May 26—actually
it was a freeze) coming after weeks of great growing
weather and good ground conditions. Many folks put
plants ‘out’ and got burnt, wasting
time and precious transplants. Another benefit of
hoophouses is easier pest control."
In the rest of the article, the
Moores give details of their hoophouse and discuss
growing techniques, watering, producing different
types of crops, insect and disease control and seed
production.
In October we received a very interesting
letter from Karuna Muthiah, a person from India
who had taken a class from John Jeavons a few weeks
before. He enclosed a newspaper article and photos
about work that was being done by the Tamil Nadu
Organic Farmers Movement (TOFARM) in the state of
Tamil Nadu to alleviate some of the damage inflicted
on agricultural land by the tsunami. This report
was written in July 2005, a little over 6 months
after the tsunami:
"In the Nagapattinam district,
about 80 villages and over 10,000 hectares of agricultural
land have been affected. TOFARM started working
in South Poigainallur about 6 months ago. …
In this village about 500 acres of good cultivable
land was affected by the tsunami. Standing crops
were destroyed, about two feet of sand was deposited
on the land, the land had become highly saline and
all the ponds in the village were filled with sea
water. Agricultural government officials who saw
the land said that it will take a number of years
to make the land productive again. However, Shri
Nammalvar, their senior advisor, had prior experience
working in such saline areas and he believed the
land could be reclaimed sooner than that and they
decided to act.
"After removing the accumulated
sand using earth-moving machines, they deep-ploughed
the land to a depth of 2 feet using disc ploughs.
They then built trenches on the sides of each field
and filled them with coarse organic matter, which
will absorb the salt leached from the land. Daincha
(Sesbania acculeata) seeds (a green manure crop
which fixes nitrogen in the soil and has the ability
to grow under a variety of extreme conditions, including
highly saline land) was sowed. I was amazed to see
daincha plants which had grown to a height of 3
feet in the land which was ravaged by the tsunami
6 months ago. These plants will be harvested and
ploughed in to the field as manure before the farmers
start to cultivate paddy once the monsoon sets in.
"They also reclaimed the
ponds [through draining] and taught the villagers
vermi-composting."
This information comes from "Are
supermarkets cheaper than farmers’ markets?"
by Emily Oakley and Mike Appel in the September
2005 issue of Growing for Market:
The authors sell their produce
at farmers markets and get remarks from some of
their customers who believe the prices are too expensive
compared to supermarkets. Finally they decided to
check it out.
They chose three area supermarkets:
an organic health food chain, the most widespread
grocery store in town and Wal-Mart. They visited
all three stores twice, once in May and once in
July of 2005, going to each store on the same afternoon.
They "made a list of the items on our farmers
market table that week and noted the grocery store’s
price."
In May at Wal-Mart, romaine lettuce
was $1.38 a head compared to the $2.50 they were
charging. However, when weighed, the Wal-Mart head
weighed less than a third of theirs, making it actually
$4.49 for a comparable weight. Of the spring crops,
11 of 22 items were cheaper at their market table,
making their produce overall the cheapest of the
other stores. For the summer crops, they again came
in first place with eight items being cheapest.
They made charts of their findings for both spring
and summer crops, which are included in the article.
"The results reveal
that perceptions rather than facts influence the
false assumptions that grocery store food is always
cheapest. … But the point of this article
is not to convince the public that local food is
cheap too. Your local farmer is NOT the place to
look for a bargain. If anything, we should be getting
a premium for providing the invaluable service of
food truly picked fresh."
The August 2005 issue of
Agroforestry News compares the food value of annual
and perennial vegetables and finds that generally
perennials have more vitamins, minerals and protein.
The plants tested were bamboo shoots, cardoon, chervil,
chickweed, chives, coltsfoot, daisy, dandelion,
dead nettle, fat hen, garden orach, garlic mustard,
good king henry, greater burnet, ground elder, ground
ivy, hogweed, lemon balm, lesser celandine, red
clover, ribwort plantain, rosebay willowherb, silverweed,
sorrel, stinging nettle and wood mallow. “With
potassium, the perennials contain on average nearly
twice the amount than conventional annuals. Note
though that the highest levels come from chickweed
and fat hen, two annual weeds. With magnesium, calcium,
iron, vitamin C and protein levels, the difference
is even more pronounced, with perennials containing
on average 2-3 times the amounts that conventional
annuals contain. With phosphorus and vitamin A the
differences are less pronounced, though the perennials
still contain significantly more.” The article
has a graph for each of the selected vegetables,
showing vitamin, mineral and protein content. |