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FarmerGrown

Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man,” quoted George Washington. It is indeed the groundwork of civilization.

08/05/2022

Tips for Starting A Sustainable Vegetable Garden

1. Test Your Soil
It's cheap and easy to test soil with a simple test kit. Buy one at your local nursury or online. This way you can see if your soil is acidic or has a high alkaline content. Then you can add compost and fertilizer accordingly. Most plants do well with a balanced ph, but some, like blueberries, like really acidic soil and so will benefit from seaweed-based fertilizers. If using manure, make sure it is 100% organic. Manure from animals that have traces of antibiotics or other hormones can damage your crops.

2. Companion Plant
Reference what plants do well together. For example, planting basil together with tomatoes improves the flavor of tomatoes and repels flies and mosquitoes. Visit Seeds Of Change for more ideas.

3. Remember Flowers
You can add beautiful edible flowers to compliment your veggie kitchen garden, like borage, nasturtium or pink jasmine to your garden. Flowers like yarrow or sweet alyssum will attract good bugs that eat aphids. These also help attract bees to your garden, that will enhance it by cross-pollinating. Edibles that bees love are rosemary and lavender.

4. Compost!
Either indoors or out. For outdoors, you can use food scraps, leaf clippings, and other organic matter. For indoor composting you can check out City Dirt.

5.Mulch
Adding mulch to your garden helps keep down on weeds, aids the soil in retaining moisture, and protects your plants' roots.

07/28/2022

How to Start a Farm: Your Complete Guide to Success

The state of small farm business in the U.S.A.:
In the U.S., small farms are considered the backbone of the agricultural industry, with 97 percent of all U.S. farms being family-owned.

In order to be considered a small farm, the USDA Economic Research Service states that you need to gross less than $350,000 per year.

There are almost two million small farms in the U.S., a data set that includes retirement farms, off-farm occupation farms, and farm-occupation farms. You can learn more about the small farm classification system from the USDA’s website, but so long as you’re within the $0-$350,000 bracket, you can guarantee your operation will be classified as a small farm business.

07/06/2022

In farming as a business you need to learn how to crawl before you can walk, it is key that you master one type of crop before you heavily invest in diversification.

Before you decide to introduce many crops to the mix, be known for one thing! And try by all means to be the person known for it…

I’m sure when we name a few farmers we know, crops are associated to their business and what they grow mostly and that’s their core strength, despite them growing other things.