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Rules to Farm By May 18, 2010 |
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
“I suggest you try growing tomatoes (or any crop, for that matter) without rotation. Nothing is as stifling to success in agriculture as inflexible adherence to someone else’s rules.” Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower. Quoted in “Growing for Market, “May, 2010.
Who sits around the dinner table making up “rules”?
My intern inquired whether or not we follow the rule of rotating all the crops each year so that no member of a plant family is grown where another family member resided the previous year.
In my typical tangential way of thinking, I suddenly thought about human families. I could see children moving around the dinner table as in a “musical chairs” game, so that each child would sit in a different chair for every meal. That would not have worked in the green kitchen of my youth. The table, also green, wasn’t that large for one thing; it barely had space for the five of us, and none of us three siblings, each differing greatly in size, via age and gender, thought of moving to a different (green) chair on a daily basis. Think about the quarrels that would have provoked! (But also notice that we were “green” before it was cool!)
But back to the vegetables.... The intern’s question was a typical one. I have to admit that we’ve certainly broken that regulation, but I wonder who dreamed it up anyway? And why?
Nature doesn’t set out to “rotate crops”....A tree and its saplings grow in the same spot for many years. When the “mama tree” eventually dies, the young trees continue on in the same place. It’s home. Lacking legs, I think most plant families in nature prefer to stay put. One exception is if the plants want to increase their territory, so that they won’t be overcrowded (the table is only so large for them too.) To do that, they devise seeds that “fly” on the wind, seeds that cling to animals, or they make seeds that animals eat and then deposit with instant fertilizer on the other side of where ever the animal goes. Finally, they make sure that somehow their seeds wind up in a farmer's or gardener's hands.
Conditions, such as severe drought may prevent the revival in the same spot of some grasses and flowering wild plants from one year to another, but in general if the conditions improve, why there they are again, blooming, growing in the original place.
So, what is wrong with a tomato plant being planted in the bed that formerly hosted its sister, the potato? Several things, say the rule makers! The potato may have had a disease that will now attack the young tomato. Perhaps also, the potato ate up every single nutrient that is now desired by the tomato. (That would have been a distinct problem back in the green kitchen to those who sat in the green chairs at the green table.) And for added drama, the pests that attacked the potato may be lurking in the mulch, waiting to dine on the tomato.
But what if there was no disease, and what if the farmer actually added some nutrition to the soil before the little tomato was tucked in? And what about the fact that down here, because of our two distinct seasons (hot and cold), the pests of one season are typically not present in the other season. Alas, apparently there are no exceptions, no excuses to the rule.
I admit, hackles up, I’ve strayed many times. A hard and fast rule, that doesn’t seem to make sense, especially if you are studying nature at all, is not one that I’m afraid to break.
But to justify my bad-girl streak, I like to think I have some common sense. After all, we are not growing just potatoes or tomatoes on this farm. We are not a mono-crop farm; we are a diversified-crop farm. There are many different families and their members (genera and species) planted here year round and we do try to group them into sections. But often we side with nature and repeat, as that’s the way it is with a rule that’s almost impossible to obey. The crops seem to do all right either way -- IF you care for your soil.
I imagine the rotation edict was created for farmers who grow perhaps three crops, each one on a thousand-acre section. Such a monotonous sea of corn might be in danger -- especially if the soil was somewhat comatose -- if it followed the corn from last year. On our farm, if one crop is a failure, that loss is buffered by the success of thirty or forty more crops.
The rule may also have come about in areas up north where all the crops must be grown together in a very short season. And importantly, some of these families are very large. You’ve got your Brassicas which include many siblings such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and the kissing cousins, mustards and kales. Then you have your Soanacea farmily (tomato-eggplant-potato-pepper) and those prolific Curcurbita with the vast array of squashes -- summer and winter -- and their half-sisters, the Cucumis (cucumbers and pumpkins.) The families of green beans and peas, onions, carrots and parsnips. How are you going to grow a diversified farm while tying yourself up in knots trying to figure out how to keep each member from banging a plate over another’s head?
You let them sit, eat and grow where they are comfortable, just like the kids around a green table. But to nix any squealing, mix them up a bit.
Another rule that has caused me much angst is the “cover crop edict.” Now I totally understand the need to build organic matter in the soil, but must I buy expensive seed from far away, while the weed seed on the farm is free, bountiful, and eager to grow? In fact, it doesn’t even need irrigation. So, while I do grow artificial cover for vacant beds, especially in the summer, often times I reply on our farm-made compost, mulching, turning under periodic crops like arugula, and those very economical weeds to shade the soil while their long roots (carbon sheathed) go deeply down to bring up minerals for the next crop of whatever. All of these efforts get results, as shown by our soil tests.
While not an established rule, it also seems almost mandatory to consider “companion planting.” Ok, so we do it and we don’t, but not because we are thinking about it. Again, observe nature. Looks like a mish-mash of plants growing through the woods or over a meadow. The yaupon holly does seem right at home with the dogwood and the post oaks, but maybe the yaupons are secretly resentful?
Pretty complicated out there, as it is on the farm. Surely most of our many plants feel companionship with each other. And some may be piqued that a member of a hated family is in the next bed. So, passive-aggressively, they throw out “bad energy” to cause some suffering to the annoying plants. If they do, then that explains why my bell peppers up and died last summer, after a glorious early harvest. I and the plant/soil lab concurred it was because of sodium buildup in the soil from the horribleness we all endured last year, with the record drought and heat wave. But, it must have been because the nearby haughty French sorrel (Polygonaceae) hated the peppers so much that it cast a spell on them simply because they are in the wretched Solanacea family.
Sigh. It’s just all too much to plan out schemes to make every plant happy. They are all going to wind up together, on the market tables, and your tables. Eventually what remains of them on the farm will go to the Hen House, the compost pile or the soil, so they may as well make peace. And slack off on the evil spells.
In reality just about the only rules that make sense to us are: grow cool-weather plants in the cool season; the hot stuff in the hot season. Also, keep your eye on the weather; it makes everything either possible or impossible. Plant by the rain. Nourish the soil; add organic matter constantly, whether through cover crops (weeds, arugula, lettuce, grains, legumes), compost, or mulch. Diversify; grow as many different families as possible. Somebody will get along with someone. If not, excuse them from the table.
Carol Ann
very beneficial to the haricot vert green beans and tomatoes....)
For your amusement:
VEGETABLE FAMILIES:
Amaryllidaceae
chives, garlic, leeks, onion
Brassicaceae
horseradish, mustard, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, radish, watercress
Chenopodiaceae
beet, Swiss chard, spinach
Compositae
endive, escarole, cardoon, artichoke, sunflower, lettuce, salsify
Cucurbitaceae
gourd, melon, squash, cucumber, luffa
Gramineae
corn
Leguminosae
peanuts, peas, beans
Solanaceae
tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato, tomatillo
Umbelliferae
celery, carrot, dill, chervil, cilantro, parsley, fennel, parsnip
Other families of interest: Convolvulaceae (sweet potato), Labiateae (basil), Malvaceae (okra), and
Polygonaceae (rhubarb, sorrel).
Source: Coleman, Eliot. The New Organic Grower. Chelsea, VT: Chelsea Green, 1989.
Family information courtesy of http://www.organicsforall.org/vegetables.htm
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