Advice from a Professional Vegetable Gardener

If you have dreamed of following around a professional vegetable gardener for a few days so you could emulate their methods in your own garden, read on! I recently had a long and fascinating conversation with a professional — Kyle Crawford — who grows and sells his edibles through a CSA. Just in case that’s an unfamiliar term, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and the basic idea is that the farmer sells “shares” in his or her harvest and then delivers them once a week through the course of the growing season.

Kyle bravely launched his CSA — Ladybird Farm — in 2020, just as the pandemic was taking off. Since then I’ve been enjoying his delicious lettuces, tomatoes, and beets (my favorite!), along with his many other veggies, fruits, and herbs. With his background — a BS in horticulture and experience managing several vegetable farms, including the vegetable garden at Innisfree Village — the man knows what he’s doing. Since many folks have taken up vegetable gardening as a result of the pandemic, my first question sought advice for those new gardeners.

Kyle’s Advice to New Gardeners:

Start small and observe! Too often newbies go too big, and Kyle says he was guilty of that himself. A better course is to put your efforts into preparing the soil and cover-cropping in a small bed, aiming to be finished with prep two weeks before planting. If you observe closely and regularly, you’ll learn a lot from your first garden that you can use to improve next season’s results.

Direct seed. Most folks wish to start with transplants purchased at a garden store, but many vegetables will perform better if grown from seed.

Start with easy-to-grow crops? Lettuce, peppers, okra, potatoes, and sweet potatoes are good starter-crops for the new gardener. You might not want to start with carrots — because they can be tough to germinate — nor with brassicas — because they can be plagued by flea beetles or caterpillars. However, Kyle has a suggestion that seems contradictory: plant what you really like; you’ll put in more effort, and that will probably pay off.

Use high-quality compost, and preferably, make your own.   “A high quality compost will contain bacteria, and fungi, as well as beneficial insects, such as springtails, worms, rove beetles, and more. Using a quality compost can reintroduce life to depleted soils that have been overworked or treated with chemicals, resulting in loss of microbial life. Soil life is important for nutrient cycling, breaking down crop residues, and providing plants with needed nutrients. I use organic soil amendments to provide nutrients to young plants, but rely mostly on creating a healthy soil so that the soil microorganisms can work together to provide plants with what they need. There are many organic soil amendments available, but a soil test will best indicate what the soil is deficient in so you’ll know what best to apply. And for building soil fertility overall, I focus on using quality compost.

Kyle’s final bit of advice: fall. It’s an excellent time to grow vegetables. Many crops from the spring have improved flavor with the cooler days in fall and pest pressure is often reduced.

 

How did you get started with CSA farming? “Food is fundamental, and I wanted to be part of that. But a lot of agriculture is bad for the environment.” Nature is also fundamental and a deep interest of Kyle’s. “Nature and food: these two have to come together,” he says. So Kyle set out to create a food-growing system that worked along with nature while doing it no harm. With these goals in mind, Kyle launched Ladybird Farm, where he dedicates himself to sustainable, environmentally-responsible methods.

How much land are you cultivating and what kind of equipment do you use? The garden is around 2/3 of an acre with permanent beds that are slightly raised. I have a walk-behind tractor with a rotary plow that I use for working soil and preparing beds, and a sickle-bar mower for cutting cover crops.

Kyle is a major practitioner of cover-cropping, and when one of my fellow Garden Shed writers raised some follow-up questions on that topic, Kyle responded with plenty of helpful detail.

Do you cover crop all growing areas over winter or do you grow too long into winter to get them started in time? And what kind of winter cover crop do you plant?  I strive to get a cover crop planted soon after a vegetable crop comes out of a bed.  The cover crop I use the most is Dutch white clover. I use it in my pathways to reduce weed pressure, protect and improve soil, and provide habitat for beneficial insects.

When possible I will seed a cover crop into an established crop so that there is a cover crop in place when a crop finishes. Timing and pairing for this is critical to prevent too much competition for the cash crop while still providing enough light to get a cover crop established. One combo that I have found to work is seeding crimson clover under peppers and fall brassicas. When timed properly, it can be lightly worked into the soil at the final weeding for the crop, and then the clover will grow slowly under the crop for the remainder of the summer. When the crop dies back or is removed, the crimson clover is ready to put on some growth in the fall and protect the soil all winter long.

For late season cover crops, I plant winter rye which can be seeded through late November (and in some cases into December). Winter rye will grow slowly in the winter and put on rapid growth with the warming of spring. I cut it in late spring — prior to setting seed — to use as mulch. Cut it too soon and it will simply regrow. I have a sickle bar mower that cuts the rye just above the soil to provide straw, but I have also cut cover crops with a scythe, which can be very effective in smaller gardens (although I have cut up to an acre in a day with a scythe). A string trimmer can cut down tall cover crops in a pinch but can also create a big mess. Winter rye is best followed by transplanted summer crops, as it can be tough to control, and its profuse growth can make it difficult to cut.   Start with a small spot when experimenting with winter rye.

Oats offer a great winter cover if planted by late summer. Oats are usually killed back by cold winter temperatures, leaving a crop residue to protect soil until spring planting. Winter peas and crimson clover are good legume cover crops that pair well with oats and will increase soil nitrogen levels. For maximum nitrogen fixation, wait until flowering before cutting back winter peas or crimson clover. Winter peas and hairy vetch work well with winter rye and provide some nitrogen in addition to straw production. The flowers on legume cover crops can be great for supporting beneficial insects; just be sure to control the cover crops before they set seed to prevent them from turning into a weed issue.

If I can’t get a cover crop seeded in time, I sometimes sprinkle on a layer of mulch for winter protection and rake this off the bed prior to spring plantings.

How do you remove the cover crop to prepare beds for planting in the spring? Do you till? And how do you prepare your beds for planting and seeding?  Working the soil is damaging to the soil life and soil structure, so I try to work the soil only when necessary. I have a rotary plow for my walk-behind tractor that I use sometimes for bed prep. The plow basically cuts a trench in the soil and tosses the soil to the right. I will run the plow down the edge of each side of a bed, effectively hilling up the middle of the bed and covering any compost or soil amendments. I then use hoes and rakes to shape the bed, depending on what crop follows (hilled for carrots and flat for cut greens). The rotary plow allows me to create a seedbed that is conducive to direct seeding with a precision seeder while leaving the middle of the bed mostly undisturbed to maintain soil structure and biology.

To work beds deeply and alleviate compaction, I use a broadfork. These can be great for alleviating compaction without destroying soil structure, but can be tough to use in rocky soil.  For some beds I only need a hoe and rake to clear off crop residue and weeds before seeding. I sometimes use a flame weeder (propane torch) to clear out weeds or cover crops. Torching back crop residues can leave a bare bed that is ready for seeding without having to work the soil.

One thing to keep in mind when flame weeding — or doing any work on the soil — is that it can be damaging to the soil microbiology and insect life in the garden. Flame weeding will kill insects as well as weeds, so always be sure to balance flame weeding with leaving cover for beneficial insects.

How do you deal with weeds?  Winter-killed oats can provide a relatively weed-free bed, allowing you to insert your transplants through the cover crop residue with minimal weeding. Winter rye cut back prior to setting seed can provide a bed with rye stubble that can be transplanted through as well, and the resulting straw can be used as mulch around the transplants for weed control.

Kyle also plants a cover crop in the summer:  buckwheat. According to Kyle, it germinates quickly and the flowers attract hordes of beneficials.

Kyle seeds the buckwheat after the last frost, and it grows quickly, smothering weeds.  Says Kyle, “I often plant a bed of buckwheat next to a crop that I want to attract beneficial insects to. For instance, I will plant a bed of buckwheat between beds of tomatoes to attract parasitic wasps for the control of tomato hornworms. Buckwheat that is allowed to produce flowers for attracting beneficial insects can produce seed and become weedy; however, it is pretty easy to control. For buckwheat that has set seed, I will often chop and drop that buckwheat right in the bed it’s growing in, and then when the seeds have germinated, I will cut the cover crop again at flowering, greatly reducing the weedy-ness of the buckwheat while providing lots of crop residue for mulching.”

“For cover crops that don’t die back in the winter, I usually cut them down at flowering, which often kills the cover crop, and I use the residue for mulching around plants. With cover crops, timing is key, and experimenting with cover crop/cash crop combos can be a great way to keep soil covered all season long.”

Do you use herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers?

“I don’t use any herbicides, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers in the garden. I control weeds largely by using a hoe, plus timely mowing and bed prep. Flaming can be especially effective to clear out weeds in a new bed without turning the soil, which would bring new weed seeds to the surface to germinate.”

“Rather than using pesticides for pest control, I have directed my efforts to creating a healthy, diverse population of predators. Predators need pests as prey, and when using sprays to control garden pests, predator populations can be negatively impacted by removing their food source. Prey populations often rebound more quickly than predator populations, thus leading to the need for additional pesticides.  Crop damage and loss can occur as you work to build a healthy predator population, which is why crop diversity is important to ensure that not all is lost.

Kyle mentioned something that was news to me: many organic farms see an uptick in pests in the first few years after making the switch to organic, but AFTER that initial period, the number of pests go down. He believes that for every pest, there’s probably some natural control — though we may not have discovered it yet.

How did you get interested in gardening? “Every summer I visited my grandparents’ farm for a week. Pretty soon I was doing things like harvesting field corn and planting it in my yard at home, just to see what would happen.” As a kid who loved visiting my own grandparents’ farm, I could definitely relate. I figure that there are lots of grandparents —  and parents — who set a future gardener in motion.

What do you like most about gardening/farming? Kyle’s answer to this question took me by surprise: the insects! He is clearly fascinated by them, saying he is constantly pausing in his work to look at insects scurrying around in his fields. He is eager to share his excitement about insects; he described with undisguised wonder finding black soldier fly maggots in his compost. Then he noticed that the population of house flies was reduced! In many ways, Kyle’s orientation is that of a scientist, and the farm offers many opportunities for discovery. No wonder he’s been experimenting with African vegetables and Asian greens!

What is your LEAST favorite part of gardening/farming? Another surprise. For Kyle, it’s harvesting. Yes, gathering the fruits of your labor is the goal, but as he explains it, “all the experiences are over” — and most gardeners know exactly what he means. The daily practice of observing, tending, problem-solving — these moments in deep interaction with nature are what it’s all about. “But don’t get me wrong,” says Kyle, “I enjoy eating the veggies too.”