Garden Like a Farmer

Garden Like a Farmer Transplants available seasonally, coming soon!

We help you garden like a farmer would, with an emphasis on varieties right for your region, organic pest and disease prevention, w**d control, timing for successions and year-round yields!

Hey friends!! SAVE THE DATE for our in-person on farm plant sale Saturday May 8! More details to come, but I'll tell yo...
03/01/2021

Hey friends!! SAVE THE DATE for our in-person on farm plant sale Saturday May 8! More details to come, but I'll tell you this: we'll have loads of herbs, tomatoes, peppers and veggie transplants, we'll have an "Ask the Farmer" stand to nerd out about gardening, we'll have farm tours, food and music! We can't WAIT to show you our new farm and share seedlings with you all!!

Check out this witch hazel woodcut from Sarah Koff Studio! I love witch hazel as a beautiful & hardy shrub, but it also ...
10/29/2020

Check out this witch hazel woodcut from Sarah Koff Studio! I love witch hazel as a beautiful & hardy shrub, but it also features beautiful flowers and its bark, and witch hazel extract made from the twigs and branches is very widely used (apparently even more so than aloe according to an article I just read!!). We just planted some of this on the farm to help our windbreak, as a late season pollinator for our beneficials and bees, as well as for its medicinal properties. Do you all grow witch hazel?

One of the very BEST reasons to start seeds yourself is so you can grow *exactly* what you’d like instead of being at th...
10/15/2020

One of the very BEST reasons to start seeds yourself is so you can grow *exactly* what you’d like instead of being at the mercy of whatever transplants the local stores have in stock. More often than not, transplant available in stores have plants that are adapted to grow best in places like California, not necessarily Maryland, or whatever region you’re in. But besides local adaptation, you can also grow peppers from a huge diversity of places! We grow a LOT of peppers from the Caribbean & Latin America like these aji dulce peppers, and many from South America. We’ll share how and when it’s best to start seeds (though you have a lot of leeway for many crops!), and we’ll even stock some unique seedlings we love next Spring.

Farmer are always thinking ahead— I’m already thinking about next years peppers!!

What are you interested in growing next year?

One of the main things about vegetable production like we do is that we work for CONTINUED harvests. It’s all well to ...
10/15/2020

One of the main things about vegetable production like we do is that we work for CONTINUED harvests. It’s all well to grow a head of lettuce for a salad, but what about next week? It’s important to plan for SUCCESSIONS if you’re going to rely on your garden for food. Successions can look like planting lettuce every 10 days (which is something we do!!), or it can look like this. This is a big field of cabbage. There are SEVEN different varieties of cabbage in this field, and SEVEN different days-to-maturity within that. What does that mean?? It means that if we planted ALL of these cabbage seeds on the same day, we’d get SEVEN different harvest times. That’s succession planting without having to break out your seeds every week!! Such a tidy and easy way to achieve continued harvests. Can’t wait for sauerkraut!!!

One thing to keep in mind when planning your garden is exactly how high maintenance it will be and how much time do you ...
10/15/2020

One thing to keep in mind when planning your garden is exactly how high maintenance it will be and how much time do you have for it all? I think it’s IMPERATIVE for the psyche of a gardener or farmer to have some low-maintenance crops in the garden. On hard days, when not everything is going well, when the high maintenance stuff doesn’t pan out, or when you want a little boost in feeling successful, low maintenance crops are EVERYTHING. That’s sweet potatoes and winter squash for me. They do SO well even when you don’t mind them. They’ll work with or without irrigation (most years), and they’ll tolerate all sorts of soil types. We hardly paid ANY attention to this sweet potato field. Barely watered it even in the drought. And we’ve got LUNKERS. Huge and beautiful sweet potatoes. Makes a grower feel good, even if they’re just a sure-fire love. What do you all grow that’s low maintenance? Let’s share some tips for those feel-good wins!!

Gardeners, do you have any free bed space? Prime seeding time for the fall has passed, but don’t despair! You CAN still ...
10/15/2020

Gardeners, do you have any free bed space? Prime seeding time for the fall has passed, but don’t despair! You CAN still plant a few things if you hurry! Direct sow radishes, arugula, mustards, spinach or lettuce!

Ready for cover crops? Throw down clovers or rye grasses.

It IS, however prime time to plant garlic! And of course, also trees! Plant any fruit, nut, native, or pollinator trees now, so they develop roots over the winter before growing out in the Spring!

Happy gardening!

📸

08/29/2020

Friends, let's get this out of the way first: no, this is not a tool you will EVER use in your garden. It's 100% a farming-scale tool. BUT stay with me here- I wanted to share with you a few things about WHY our waterwheel transplanter does such a great job to help farmers at all scales have thriving, happy plants! (PLUS, I wanted to remind you that it's time to start planting your gardens for FALL and WINTER harvests!).

ONE- The wheels on this space out the distance between plants and creates a nice hole for them. The thoughtful and consistent DISTANCE between plants and planting DEPTH are crucial!

TWO- The lugs of water fill the hole with water (you can adjust it but I like to give them a good LOT of water) -- and it's water we usually "spike" with nutrients to help the plant transition and GROW.

These things are simple, but CRITICAL to those first days in your baby plants life! Perfect distance apart, consistent depth, lots of water, and some nutrients! Here's a few other tips for successful transplanting:
-Do it in the early morning or in the evening, preferably before a cooler, CLOUDY day (the sun makes plants photosynthesize aka WORK, which is stressful on moving day).
-Plant HEALTHY plants that haven't gotten root-bound or stunted yet! Also don't plant ones that are too little, or they'll struggle too! Make sure they've been hardened off, which will be a topic for another post! ;)

Folks, don't get too caught up in the details and make sure you keep GARDENING. Just keep these few simple tips in mind to getting your plants to take better and grow faster! Give them the right amount of space, water and nutrients, and if you can, transplant them when it's a little cooler or cloudy! Happy growing!! -Emma

One more thing about hornworms! If you happen to spot one covered with little white things, leave it be! Those are the e...
08/29/2020

One more thing about hornworms! If you happen to spot one covered with little white things, leave it be! Those are the eggs of bracanoid wasp, which disgustingly/conveniently lays its eggs in the hornworm and when the eggs hatch, the larva EAT THE HORNWORM. So, good to keep this wasp population healthy in your garden/farm. Look for little white dots under tomato leaves (they are actually easier to spot than the hornworms) and if you see them, give a little shout for NATURE 👏👏👏
Thanks to for the photo submission!!

From Emma: One of the major differences I’ve seen between farmers and gardeners is actually SUPER simple to change, and ...
08/29/2020

From Emma: One of the major differences I’ve seen between farmers and gardeners is actually SUPER simple to change, and that is: HAVE A PLAN. A plan can be super complex - like our weekly chart of seeding that spans over 100 varieties of veggies— or SUPER simple, like a monthly outline of what to do in the garden. Plans ALWAYS change with the unknowns that Mother Nature brings, but having a plan helps to ground you, remind yourself of what you want to grow and when to do it, and helps to keep you on track.

When I was first starting out as a gardener, I struggled with seeding in time for Fall planting since I was so caught up tending my summer crops, and I didn’t remember how long I should wait between successions of plantings for continued harvests of my favorite crops.

My simple tip to you? WRITE DOWN the things that are important to you to have in your garden. Look up when to plant them & write it on your calendar!
A few things you can plant right now? Kale, scallions, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, chard & broccoli for the fall!

Up here in the woods of NH I am waiting impatiently for my many tomatoes to ripen. We’ve gotten a handful of sungolds so...
08/29/2020

Up here in the woods of NH I am waiting impatiently for my many tomatoes to ripen. We’ve gotten a handful of sungolds so far and that’s it. But— problems always seem to arise when you have to wait. In this case, it’s disease/fungus/BLIGHT—a gardener’s faaaaavorite! 🤙🥴
This is one of four tomato patches on my garden and all of these here are losing their leaves quickly. I’m thinking it’s septoria leaf spot— started with brown mottling around the bottom leaves and spread quickly to killing the whole leaf stem. This is how I’ve learned to deal with blight/fungal issues from Emma the farmer:

1- Removing all affected leaves and putting them in a garbage bag rather than the compost
2- Spraying the ground around the base of the plant rather than sprinkling from above to try to keep leaves dry and avoid splashing up fungus from the soil.
3- Mulching around the base of the plants to do the same thing.
4- Pruning well and spacing/staking far enough apart to ensure good airflow.
5-Making sure tomatoes don’t grow in the same bed as last year
What I SHOULD be doing but haven’t: choosing resistant varieties to grow in the first place, which should be labeled right on the seed description. Well, I’m always learning and there’s always next year, eh?

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9700 Gravel Hill Rd
Woodsboro, MD
21798

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