The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (”PASA”) has released the schedule, brochure, and event details for their upcoming annual conference that will be held on February 6th and 7th, with pre-conference workshops scheduled on the 4th and 5th of the month.

The programs will take place in State College, PA on the campus of the Penn State University. This is the 18th annual conference that PASA has sponsored and it’s obvious that they really know how to organize things and always put on a fantastic conference.

This has become my favorite agriculture event with all sorts of information and activities of interest to farmers, gardeners, and anyone concerned about the quality of our food supply. I highly recommend attending if you have the opportunity, and here’s a brief preview of the planned festivities:

Pre-Conference Educational Tracks Focused on the Farm and Garden

The pre-conference tracks are separate sessions focusing on specific topics that take place in advance of the main conference program. The pre-conference track topics include:

• Sustainable Forest Farming and Management,
• 21st Century Victory Gardening,
• Farmers Market Success Strategies,
• Integrated Pest Management & Bio-Controls,
• Green Learning (a program for high school students),
• Innovative Cover Cropping Systems, and
• Techniques for Improving Organic Vegetable Production.

That’s just a sampling of the pre-conference tracks, there are 13 separate tracks in total and you can get the specifics on each of them at the PASA website. My biggest dilemma is picking just one class from this line-up of great courses!

Interesting and Informative Sustainable Agriculture Workshops

There’s an even wider selection of workshops scheduled on Friday and Saturday when the conference officially opens. A few of the interesting topics on the schedule include the following:

• Year-Round Growing: Focus on Mulching & Tunnels
• Bugs ‘n Bunnies: How to Outwit Them in the Backyard Garden
• How to Grow, Harvest, Manage, and Market Nut Crops
• Overwintering Techniques for Successful Blackberry Production
• Culinary Herbs: Growing, Harvesting and Processing
• Integrated Forest Management: Making a Living in the Woods
• Certified Organic Apple Production
• Plant Your Own Patch! American Ginseng Forest Farming
• Small Space Community Food Production
• The Plight of the Honey Bees & How to Help Them Thrive
• Year-Round Backyard Mini-Farming
• Pollinators, Predators & Plants: Building Landscapes to Attract Beneficial Insects

Looks like more tough choices in deciding which of the concurrent sessions to take in! Well the good news is that all of the sessions are professionally recorded and available even if you can’t make it to the conference.

Other Farming for the Future Conference Activities and Features

In addition there will be keynote speakers, plenty of entertainment, tasty organic meals, the FarmArts Project, sustainable vendors and displays, a benefit auction, and much more. You’ll also have a chance to make new friends and meet people who share your passion for organic gardening and sustainable farming.

New to the conference this year will be a sustainable agriculture job fair, organized roundtable discussions, annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG), designated infant care space, and a knitting circle hosted by the Northern Tier Fiber Artists.

Visit the PASA website for all of the details and to register for the conference. Some of the meal plans and pre-conference educational tracks are likely to sell out, so don’t drag your feet if there is a particular program that you would like to attend. Hope to see you there!

The weekend found the garden covered by its first blanket of snow. I’m still growing a few vegetables here in Central PA despite the fact that the weather conditions have turned cold and wintry a lot sooner than I’d prefer.

When it’s not covered by the white stuff, the garden is still green and yielding a limited selection of fresh produce for the kitchen. Kale, collards, broccoli, turnip greens, Swiss Chard, spinach, arugula, leeks, and a few other hardy fall vegetables.

Still Harvesting Hardy Fall Vegetables from the Garden!

You won’t see the rapid growth and production of summer, but the leafy greens will hold better in the garden than they would in the refrigerator. And it’s great to have the option of harvesting a few leaves of fresh garden produce to supplement store bought vegetables. You can reap a surprising amount of nutritious greens from the garden in spite of the weather.

One trick is to hold off harvesting leafy vegetables when they are frozen solid in the garden. Instead wait for a break in weather conditions and allow the leaves to thaw out before you pick and bring them indoors. Unlike the summertime when it’s best to harvest greens during the cooler morning hours, winter forces the gardener to delay harvesting until the warmer times of the day or week. Continue Reading About “Snowfall Marks Changing Times in the Veggie Garden” »

One of the great things about raising shallots, multiplier onions, and gourmet garlic is that it’s so easy to produce your own seed stock for future plantings. The subject of garlic seed saving was raised in a recent comment and inquiry from Cynthia:

“I had such a good crop of Fireball garlic last year that I used some of the best cloves for planting last week. Hope that it works. Have others saved their own bulbs or are you buying new ones every year?”

Saving the Best of Your Garlic Harvest for Seed Stock

It doesn’t get any simpler in terms of seed saving than to sort through your garlic harvest and select the largest and best looking bulbs to become the seed stock for future garlic generations. But it does sometimes require a bit of discipline to resist cannibalizing those prized garlic bulbs that must be set aside and reserved for seed!

While most gardeners want to use super sized bulbs for planting stock, some argue that the medium sized bulbs are just as good and maybe even a better choice for planting. I’m OK with using either as seed stock, but reject any dwarfed cloves from the seed quality bulbs and send them off to become salsa or guacamole instead of seed. Continue Reading About “Homegrown Garlic Makes for Effortless Seed Saving” »

I finally found time to plant my gourmet garlic seed a week ago just before the weather turned noticeably colder and killing frosts descended onto the vegetable garden.

The gourmet garlic varieties planted out included Music, German White, Ukrainian Red, and Italian Purple. Over a hundred cloves went into a section of the garden measuring about 15 feet long by 4 feet wide. A dozen potato onion bulbs were planted alongside the garlic in the end of the bed.

Preparing the Garden for Planting Garlic Seed

The garlic bed occupies the same area that played host to my heirloom tomatoes during the heat of summer. After the tomato plants were removed I planted a quick cover crop of rye that grew to four inches tall before it was turned under to make way for the garlic to be planted.

I usually don’t bother planting a cover crop between the summer veggies and the fall garlic but decided to put the raised beds brief down time to productive use this fall. After turning and allowing the cover crop to decompose a bit, the soil in bed was loosened to a depth of about eight inches with a digging fork. Continue Reading About “There’s More to Fall Garlic than Meets the Eye” »

Who says that you need big acreage, fencing, and a place in the country in order to raise small livestock? You can ignore zoning ordinances, noise restrictions, or the neighbor’s objections when it comes to worm farming no matter where you reside.

Composting worms are the perfect breed of livestock for the gardener who wants to raise a little more than fruits, vegetables, and herbs in the backyard. The worms won’t put meat on the dinner table but they’ll happily recycle your kitchen waste and turn it into a rich, organic plant food known as worm castings.

It’s Time to Open a “Can-O-Worms”

I was fortunate enough to inherit a four-story worm bin, complete with red wriggler composting worms when a co-worker relocated out of state this summer (thanks Gretchen)! I’ve written about the perks of vermiculture and worm castings here in the past but this was my first attempt at vermicomposting.

The worms spent the summer contentedly out on the patio but this weekend I decided it was time to bring them indoors for the winter. The transition gave me a perfect excuse to tear things apart and take a close look at what was happening inside the worm bin. The experience was very similar to inspecting a colony of bees inside of a hive. Continue Reading About “Worm Farming: Livestock for the Home Gardener” »

I hate to admit it but summer is over, fall has arrived, and winter is on the way. There no getting around it so I may as well accept it!

Not that I have anything agaist autumn, it’s actually my favorite growing season in the vegetable garden, but I don’t look forward to cold, snow and icy conditions that follow it at all.

“Are You Still Planting Out There?”

A neighbor looked over at the garden a couple weeks ago and was surprised to find that I was still working and planting like it was springtime. I was busy thinning turnips, transplanting kale seedlings, and sowing seeds of mesclun, mache, spinach, winter cress, and other cold hardy vegetables.

With a little luck the garden will continue growing and yielding produce through the month of December here in the Zone 6 region of Central Pennsylvania. The only summer crops remaining in the ground are a couple of tomatillos, sweet potato vines that are rambling out of control, and various frost-tender herbs like basil and epazote. Continue Reading About “Garden Log 9-30-08; So Long Summer, Hello Fall” »

I joined a group of fellow explorers from the PA Backyard Fruit Growers Association this past weekend to take part in a perilous expedition in search of wild Paw Paws in the back country of South Central, PA.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so dangerous, and most of the Paw Paw trees were actually fairly tame and cultivated varieties rather than those growing wild, but it was still a new and interesting experience for most of our group. The BYFG Paw Paw tours take place each fall but this was my first opportunity to attend the annual outing.

Introducing the Unusual and Rare Paw Paw Tree

If you’re not familiar with the Paw Paw don’t feel bad because they’re pretty uncommon and seldom find their way into the typical backyard landscape. They do grow wild in Pennsylvania and other areas on the East Coast, with a range that extends down into the southern states.

Paw Paws are a medium sized, upright growing tree with large dark green leaves, and clusters of fruit that ripen early in the fall season. The tree is attractive and often takes on a pyramid like shape with a wide base narrowing to a peak at the top.

There are many different varieties of Paw Paws including; Sunflower, Mango, Collins Select, Pennsylvania Golden, Davis, and Rebecca’s Gold. Growers are also currently working to develop new varieties of Paw Paws in attempts to improve its growth, quality, and productivity. Continue Reading About “Stalking the Exotic and Wild Paw Paw Tree” »

Would you like to try your hand at growing a fall veggie garden this year but aren’t quite sure how to manage it because your entire garden is currently over flowing with juicy tomatoes, sweet peppers and other summer crops that are still in full production?

That’s a dilemma that many backyard gardeners are faced with at this time of year and the solution often calls for some rather ruthless decisions and drastic actions… Do you pull out the old to make room for new crops, or do you delay planting and take the risk of running short of growing season to mature those cold hardy fall vegetables?

Growing into the Fall Gardening Season

After all, timing is critical and the changing seasons are unpredictable when it comes to forecasting frosts, hard freezes, and other weather conditions. Then there’s the matter of decreasing day lengths and the reduced levels of sunlight that are the major villains disrupting plant growth and creating a roadblock for the fall gardener.

Personally, mid to late summer is the time of year that I’m looking for excuses to free up garden space for my precious fall vegetable garden, and nothing is sacred that’s left growing in the summer beds. Any slackers, under performers, or has beens are destined either for the dinner table or the compost heap. Continue Reading About “Extreme Makeovers for Awesome Fall Vegetable Gardens” »