| How Many Fingers Can Join us? (Thumbs Count, Too!)
April 4
 
Hello Farm Friends,
This coming weekend at the farm has a large project for any and all who want to join us! The plan this weekend is to begin the process of weeding the 1st wave plants, mostly peppers and tomatoes.
More fingers in the greenhouse make the work go faster and easier. It's not a particularly difficult job. But it can get tedious and a bit boring. It's why I open the invite to as many people as want to come on either Saturday, April 10 or Sunday April 11.
Come about 9 AM to get started, leave whenever you need to go. Whatever works for your schedule.
This project offers lots of time to visit and get to know each other as we can talk while we work. I am also planning a bonfire social after the work day is over for those who want to hang out. If you just want to come out to the party afterwards, I will make sure the bonfire gets going by 4 PM both days.
If you can join us, please respond to this email so I can plan accordingly for the number of people who come out. Expect a very warm greenhouse with temperatures in the 80s. Bring sunglasses, water bottle, lunch and snacks, and a lawn chair for the bonfire if you plan to hang out.
Now for a bit of explanation...
Soil Microbial Life as the Priority
Every year some who come to see this work in person ask me why we go to the trouble of having to pull weeds in the garden plants we grow and sell here at Covenant Gardens. Isn't there an easier way? Why take on so much tedious work? Why don't you grow your plants like everyone else does?
The answer is related to the Regenerative Agriculture principles that govern everything we do here at Covenant Gardens.
As I mentioned last time, the commercial process for growing plants for market begins with sterilized soil mix. What that entails is essentially cooking (or steaming) soil to a temperature exceeding 180 degrees for at least 30 minutes. Presto! All weed seeds have been "cooked" till dead and there will be no weeds to pull. This little shortcut means labor costs have been eliminated from that step of production. It's a process governed by the bottom line of commercial agriculture.
Do you know what else has been eliminated through the sterilization process? All the biotic life in the soil has also been cooked to death. So the plants in conventional growing systems will all start their life in sterile, dead soil and have to consume synthetic chemical fertilizers to grow.
The most important thing for overall health is soil health. This basic axiom at the center of Regenerative Agriculture means we must choose a completely different process to grow our garden plants. Our process is designed to respect the significance and importance of the biotic life in the soil. This soil biome is our friend to cultivate, not an enemy to destroy.
Let Your Fingers Do The Killing
The alternative to conventional sterile soil mix is a living, organic, biologically active soil mix. One of the key components of the soil mix we use in Covenant Gardens plants is the very same garden soil we grow our veggies in all summer long.
Live garden soil includes weed seeds, so we will need to engage in some "targeted killing" in order to give our plants the nurture they need to thrive. I have attached a picture of our plants as they look right now with the tomato plant in the center and germinating weed seeds around it to give you an idea. We go through them individually and remove the weeds from each pot.
The key is to get the timing right so that the weeds have all germinated by the time we go through the weeding process. Not so early that more seeds come up later. And not too late so that the weed competition creates a detrimental effect on our garden plants. This coming weekend will be perfect timing.
Consider this as a targeted killing spree accomplished by many fingers. We are aiming to remove the weeds from the plants, without destroying the entire biotic life in the soil of the pot. No cooking soil at temperatures above 180 degrees. No synthetic fertilizers to try to "make up" from the sterile condition of dead soil.
Benefits of Growing in Live Soil
We get a completely different result by maintaining our priority of soil health as a regenerative grower. It's a little bit more work, but once the weeds have been removed from our plants, the plants will grow with vigor and a natural health that cannot be duplicated using sterile soil and synthetic fertilizers.
In the big picture, our process allows all of the gains we see in building healthy, biologically active, robust soil in our gardens, with diverse microbial life -- all of the really, really good things -- can be incorporated into growing our garden plants that we provide for our customers. So the very biological life we are encouraging in our veggie garden space by use of compost, cover crops, and regenerative management, gets to benefit the garden plants we grow for market as well.
Everyone thinks they are buying plants from Covenant Gardens during planting season. (The habit of viewing soil as an "inert" growing medium runs deep!) But the truth is, our customers are purchasing a complete soil-plant system that brings tremendous benefits for the garden this year, and even potentially for their future gardens as well.
In fact, that biological life goes with the plants in every pot and can actually help "seed" our neighbors' gardens with soil microbes we have been fostering for years here on the farm. Our healthy soil life gets "exported" to many local gardens, enhancing the fertility wherever they are planted.
The system we use in our greenhouses prepares our plants for outdoor growing in other ways, as well. Those weeds that grew in the pots exposed them to weed pressure, even a sort of introduction, to the chemical interaction that happens in all gardens throughout the summer. They are prepared for it. The Montana soil in their pots prepares them for the outdoor soil of their garden home.
The difference is not just healthy plants, but resilient plants that are used to Montana soil and Montana weeds from their time as seedlings. And we don't bother using energy to cook soil at 180 degrees, so it is an energy efficient way to produce plants that is good for the environment.
Let me know if you can join us and what day you can come!
Directions
We are located about 15-20 minutes south of Whitehall near the Jefferson River in Waterloo. We are sort of between Whitehall and Twin Bridges off of MT Highway 55.
Our physical address is 27 Gornick Lane, Whitehall, which will get you close.
**Special Note** Our driveway comes in from Carney Lane, so drive past Gornick Lane and take the first driveway on the right, through the double green gates. It is a long driveway and the farm is behind the large sod field and pasture. You can see a cabin from Carney Lane in the distance. That is the farm.
Blessings,
Tim Martin
CovenantGardens.com
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