What a wonderful writeup with photos. I almost feel like I was there. I can see why it was worth attending.

And you should write that up into an article (it really already IS one) for ATP!
http://garden.org/ideas/manage...


I enjoyed learning & seeing the photos! I can't get over how rich & black the soil is!!!!! And what? A mosquito? Nooooooooooooo!

Really enjoy your blog and especially this garlic event report!

Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Be happy to share it as an article. Just give me some direction as to how to go about it and I'll gladly do it. Still finding my way around the site ... I see you already did give me help to do just that ... thank you!

It was a great event ... classy and informative. The smell of garlic as we walked into the greenhouse where the young plants were being prepared for market was wonderful. We don't usually pull our plants young to eat that way, but I think that will have to change because we're out of our last year's harvest now.

I especially found the info. on tilling under the fresh mustard green leaves to kill the nematodes fascinating! Wowzer!

that blows my mind.

And here in Fl. we are famous for nematodes. Everybody curses them ~~~ so many things get affected by them & die. Who knew a little old southern favorite would easily take care of the problem w/o all this fumigating & poisoning the earth. Dave, this would be the perfect place for a shaking the head smiley. So many times I find myself shaking my head at something....... or saying tsk, tsk, tsk....

From what I remember there are many different species ... yuk! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
And two things about the mustard is it has to be dug into the ground as soon as it is cut to ensure fumigation otherwise the gases escape into the air. Mike told us you have to cut it, till it in really really fast, and tamp the soil down. He said you can actually see the gases rising if you catch it in the right light ... and he of all people should know what he was talking about ... he was the Plant Pathologist from the University of Guelph.

There is a commercial product that has been produced called MustGrow ... we're checking it out too.

Meanwhile if you want to know more go to
http://www.sare.org/Learning-C...

some of their books are available free as PDF downloads

Some of the titles ...
- Managing Cover Crops Profitably <-- very very interesting content, tables, etc.
(see page 32 for info about cover crops that kill nematodes- mustard, marigold, etc.
and see charts on pp.67-72)
- Building Soils for Better Crops
- Crop Rotation on Organic Farms
etc.

You'd think we had a farm