Here at A Rocha the crops aren’t the only things that we rotate. Recently we rotated our greenhouses!
‘But why?’ you might ask.
Well it’s the smart folks on our Sustainable Agriculture team at Brooksdale Environmental Centre. They pay special attention to the soil that grows our food. Check out this factoid from The Plot Thickens (a Community Garden Guidebook – helpful for first-time farmers / gardeners) on why soil is important to healthy plants:
Soil is ALIVE; it is teeming with fungi, bacteria and other organisms. So, don’t feed the plants, feed the soil. The way to do this is by adding organic matter on a regular basis. Compost, manure and mulch will improve the quality and fertility of your soil over time.
If our veggies feed off nutrients in the soil – then it is important to make sure the soil has the appropriate nutrients!
“Plants of a certain family use similar nutrients,” says Paul Neufeld – the Farm Manager at Brooksdale. “Moving things around allows you to avoid removing all the nutrients from a given area.”
So why did we rotate our greenhouse? So we can plant our tomatoes in a different location this year – giving the old soil a rest, and enjoying the abundant nutrients found in the new location’s soil.
“The greenhouse also allows you to keep the environment of the plants more dry. That helps reduce disease” says Farmer Paul. “Tomatoes thrive in a hot and dry environment.”
A disease called ‘late blight’ is a common problem for tomatoes all around the continent where there is lots of moisture. “I’ve had years where I’ve had some of my crop unprotected. One year in particular we had two 50 foot rows of tomatoes. Just as they were starting to ripen the blight took over and we lost all of our tomatoes.”
Blight is significantly delayed in the greenhouse, which is why our Agriculture team needed a hand to move the poly-tunnel greenhouse to it’s new location. We’re looking forward to another season of fresh, organic tomatoes!
Thanks to everyone who gave us a hand up 🙂
Photos by: Harold Neufeldt & Tim Hall
