Grow Your Own Beauty ­ Cut Flowers

Alex and Betsy Hitt support themselves entirely by producing cut flowers and vegetables on about 3.5 acres, and described their system for raising and selling cut flowers. "We live by cover crops," Alex began, "and we soil-test each section annually to track P, K and lime, adding amendments in September if needed." They like growing flowers for many reasons, one of which is the beneficial insect habitat they provide. Since the diversity of flowers they grow represents so many plant families, they organize their rotation blocks according to what season each flower crop is planted and when it finishes production. The three main categories are hardy in zone 7A (to 0-5^oF), half-hardy (to 20^oF), and tender. They plant hardy species in September to obtain early, vigorous and long-stemmed blooms in spring. Spring plantings give a smaller crop in summer. Some flowers are direct seeded, the rest they raise their own greenhouse starts in 128-cell trays.

They flame-weed just before crop emergence, then use a wheel hoe or Lily tine weeder between emerged crop rows. They find winter chickweed and henbit in September-planted overwintering flowers the most challenging, and are considering winterkilled cover crop mulch. They find summer weeds easy to manage, as most summer flowers close canopy after one or two passes with the wheel-hoe. They had to fence out deer, rabbits and groundhogs, but have had few insect pests because the highly diverse flower crops make effective farmscape for beneficials.

"Harvest and post-harvest handling are the most important part of the flower operation," Alex noted. Flowers have to be harvested at the right stage for maximum vase life; for example, larkspur flowers open over the top third of the spike, and iris just beginning to show color in the buds. Cut stems must be gotten out of the sun and into a bucket of water with floral preservative as soon as practical. The Hitts keep buckets in a shaded vehicle at the end of the crop row during harvest. Since bacteria will clog cut stem ends, cut off water uptake and make the flower wilt, a bactericidal floral preservative is a must, and they are looking into NOP-acceptable preservatives. Flowers are stored in walk-in coolers (32^oF for cool-season flowers, but not below 45^oF for tender species), and never commingled with fruit which give off ethylene and spoil the flowers.

They grow zinnias in a mix of colors as the "workhorse of the system," as zinnias are popular, easy to grow and readily form 24-inch stems. In fact, it all started with a few rows of zinnias, which sold like hotcakes at the roadside stand. Next they began to make bouquets for grocery stores, and within three years of soaring demand, they were up to two acres in some 160 different varieties of cut flowers. Since bouquets are labor intensive, they prefer to sell by the stem or the bunch. Currently they sell all their flowers through the farmers¹ market, except 70 bouquets per week through one grocery store.

Growing Cukes - where no cuke had grown before

Jim Jacobs of Joyful Noise in Virginia Beach told the story of how he first adopted high tunnel greenhouses for organic vegetables, and how his system has evolved since then. On a farm located near conventional corn fields, he could not grow cucumbers because cucumber beetles would invariably bring lethal bacterial wilt. But when he grew them in a cold frame ­ magic! ­ no beetles, no wilt, and he harvested cucumbers. So he started building high tunnels, and first learned several ways not to do it. Construction grade plastic lasts barely a year, then breaks into many small bits creating a huge litter headache, while black plastic water pipes won't hold up in warm weather. The next thing he learned was not to use PVC pipes for the frame, because they accelerate chemical breakdown of the greenhouse plastic cover. After getting the materials and design right, Jim began to realize major successes from a modest investment.

The greenhouse maintains temperatures of about 12^oF above outdoor ambient, which in Virginia Beach allows him to plant cukes around Feb 15, with harvest going from mid April until mid July. A second planting of cukes yield through December, and this year he harvested peppers until one week before the conference! With 500 pots, each containing one cucumber plant, he harvests about 500 large (1-pound) cucumbers a week.

Jim started by filling large pots (2 ft by 2 ft) with straight compost, and growing a rotation of crops (cucumber followed by tomato or pepper, then lettuce and spinach). After doing this for five years, topping pots off each year with a couple inches of compost, he had "beautiful soil" in them. Two disadvantages of the pots are that the drip irrigation emitters (one per pot) must be watched carefully for clogging, and that soil level is two ft above ground, which reduces the distance that plants can grow up before they must be trellised horizontally. He is considering switching to large (12 by 18 inch) gutters, which sit lower, and in which an occasional clogged emitter does not leave a plant totally dry.

Crops are foliar-fed with a seaweed-fish fertilizer, and occasionally Jim adds some poultry-litter based organic NPK to the pots and mixes it into the soil, as it molds if left on top. He makes aerated compost tea from forest soil in a simple home brewer, and finds that it sometimes controls disease, though results are not consistent. He found baking soda and Dr. Bronner's soap highly effective on gray mold.

Growing Healthy Livestock

Emile DeFelice, pastured pork producer from South Carolina, walked his audience through the entire process of raising and marketing pastured pork. Emile's two handouts summarize his experience and recommendations in as succinct a statement of practices as is possible. In essence, train pigs to electric fencing while they are babies; keep them well-fed and watered; always treat them with kindness; take advantage of a pig's natural skills and abilities -- let a pig be a pig and don't worry about wallows; a good butcher / processor is worth the effort of finding and paying; and finally market "your own story" in concentric circles from your home base. No one can take "local" from you and no one can take "you" from you. Emile's farm is CawCaw Creek Farm in St. Matthews, SC. The farm web site is http://www.cawcawcreek.com/.

Jerry Brunetti is managing Director of Agri-Dynamics, a 25 year old company specializing in ecologically friendly pesticides and bio-stimulants, natural feed additives and herbal nutraceuticals for livestock, equines, and pets. Jerry is one of those rare people who can explain complex scientific processes in language anyone can understand. Starting with the basic metabolism of livestock and how what an animal eats affects its health and productive capacity, Jerry walked his audience through livestock health from the soil up. A mineral rich and biologically active soil with a healthy, diverse plant community is key. Using soil and tissue tests to illustrate his points, Jerry showed his audience the relationships between soil mineral levels, plant mineral levels, and livestock health. From there he went on to explain how livestock will, in essence self-medicate, by seeking out and eating small amounts of certain weeds and shrubby plants -- hence the need for bio-diverse pastures. These plants contain high levels of trace and minor elements as well as high levels of organic compounds beneficial to animal health. The February, March, and April issues of ACRES, USA (http://www.acresusa.com) contain a series of articles by Jerry, which summarize much of his presentation. To contact Jerry, visit the Agri-Dynamics web site http://www.agri-dynamics.com/.