Author: knoell11

This week I worked on preparing my beds for planting, which I hope to start planting in by next week. Thursday afternoon I worked on the wood chip area that I am helping to establish as a production bed. I am planning to plant my milky oats, skullcap, and calendula here. I began by digging up all of the larger weeds which consisted of blackberry, thistle, and grass clumps. I took all of these out to prepare to till. John laid the wood chips around three years ago in anticipation of building healthy soil to one day cultivate beds here. Already there in the plot lives several wild rose plants, which were propagated and planted by john, osoberry, and some tiny current plants. After the larger weeds were out John trained me on how to operate his tiller, a task I was pretty nervous about as operating clunky machinery is not my greatest skill. I felt a little strange as I was tilling as I am a pretty big no-till advocate but I had the rationale that using a tiller once in a bed to break down wood chips and create soil that will support healthy crops is a situation I feel better about. John was using the wood chips to create a healthy mycelium network so I did wonder about how the tilling was affecting the microbes and insects in the soil, I think I would need to conduct more research to form my opinion. I am just an intern on this farm so those decisions are up to John.

I surprised myself and found that I picked up the tiller pretty quickly and was happy to find that I understood how the machinery worked without any major issues popping up. It felt empowering to be able to operate it in such a small space, having to turn and maneuver it over and over again. I am pretty happy about how the soil is looking now, I was trying to be conservative about how many times I tilled over the same area and left the soil texture with a small number of wood chips, which will break down pretty fast. Next week I plan to add mulch to increase the soil’s water-holding capacity, as there isn’t an irrigation system set up here yet. I am also beginning to plan how to layout my beds and am wondering about experimenting with growing the milky oats in trays in the greenhouse with the timed sprinkler system, I will do more research next week and make a final decision.

I spent Friday afternoon working on the arnica patch, which is proving to be a difficult pursuit. The further I get into the bed the more densely spaced the arnica starts are, making it a lot harder to remove weeds and not disrupt the arnica root system. I will continue to chip away at it over the next few weeks.

John lent me a copy of one of his favorite herb books, The Medicinal Herb Grower by Richo Cech, a prominent herbalist who started the seed company “Strictly Medicinal”. The book is really fascinating and provides a lot of information for new herb growers. Richo grows his herb gardens in a spiral and I am wondering if it would be feasible for the new plot at Alamere. I am interested in doing some sort of design but am also thinking about production rates and efficiency. I am going to begin to map out my plans and planting next week!

I started off this week with a meeting with John. We discussed logistical matters and decided on where my beds will go. I decided on spots that would also benefit John down the line, as I want to be sure to make this a mutualistic exchange. John is an Evergreen and POF alumni and I am the first intern he has had on this farm. His main focus now is on his start production for the farmer’s market and work in his greenhouses and I will be helping to maintain and start new herb beds for harvest and medicinal use. Three of my beds, for calendula, skullcap, and milky oats, will be going in an area that has been ‘brewing’ for several years. John has been building the soil up with a bark chip inoculation method and it is now time to establish it as a production site. To prepare the beds I will weed out the bigger weeds growing there then run a BSC over to incorporate the new soil.

I will also be helping to revive a once-established patch of arnica John planted several years ago. It is overcome with a thick mat of grass and weeds and I spent some time beginning to carefully rescue the small arnica babies. Our deal is I will get to keep the harvest this year and it will benefit future harvests to give the patch extra TLC this year.

My next steps are to locate starts and seeds of calendula, skullcap, and milky oats, and to continue to work on getting beds established. A friend of mine works at another local herb farm and I may be able to get starts from them. My plan is to grow skullcap and milky oats for tincture making and arnica and calendula for infused oils and topical medicine. My goal for next week is to get my seeds and starts in the greenhouse to establish and grow stronger as well as to get a good chunk of bed preparation done in hopes to plant around week three.