Caring for the soil through compost

The most important factor in growing good plants is that the soil is healthy and that requires effort to maintain.

Every plant whether it be a tomato or a radish pulls up nutrients from the soil to feed itself and if there is not enough of key nutrients it needs the plant will struggle.

Growing a wide variety of crops on the same area means we can’t be exact in replenishing the nutrients for each crop but we apply compost to be more broadly beneficial to everything.

The nutrients in the compost are slow releasing with around a third of it in the first year and the almost all of the rest over the next three years. That’s why we apply the compost before every planting or seeding to continue building up the organic matter and nutrients in the soil.

The compost we get is from Cold Creek Compost in Ukiah and they bring it to the farm with a truck that pulls two trailers. Each trailer can carry about 12 tons of compost and we ordered a truckload which is two trailers full.

This load of compost came out to 23.63 tons of compost and every time it is slightly different depending on the moisture of the compost. A drier load will fill the trailer and way a lot less than one with good moisture.

Their compost is widely used by farmers in the area because it is certified organic and it has chicken manure in it giving the compost more nutrients than others. In addition to the chicken manure the compost has grape pommace, yard trimmings and food waste.

In addition to spreading compost to help the soil, we cover crop in the winter and mow the cover crops down and incorporate them to provide organic matter in the spring.

Even the tomato plants or melon vines at the end of the season provide some organic matter to the soil when we mow them down and incorporate them at the end of the season.

Spreading the compost is the first step in preparing to plant for the fall and we have been doing it for the past couple of weeks. We then need to water the soil to improve the moisture before we use the tractor and its implements to get the soil ready for planting.

The first crops we seeded in the greenhouse are getting ready to be planted and we are starting to direct seed the first of the fall crops.

Watering them in is crucial and then with good soil they should grow pretty fast with the heat of summer still here.

A couple of new plantings of watermelons are coming in and they will be here only for a few weeks.

The amazing Dark Belle is a larger size than the earlier plantings but still has that incredible flavor and red color.

At the larger property we are harvesting a decent amount of Tendersweet Orange. It is very delicious and orange on the inside.

You will need a group of people to eat them as they are pretty big.