Durst Organic Farms

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Location:

Information is taking from website. WIP!

Philosophy:

Make the soil equal or more healthy than they found it.

Methods:

Organic approved methods for weed, pest, and nutrition problems

Pest Management

They acknowledge that they have to strike a balance between insects that need to live there and their need to make money. This consists of:

  1. intensive daily monitoring
  2. knowing what insects are in their field and how they interact with the ecology

ways of monitoring for pests:

When they find insects/imbalances, they respond with an approach thats been organically approved by CCOF CCOF stands for California Certified Organic Farmers.

Preventative Practices

  1. Plant variety selection
  2. Timing of planting with respect to pest life cycles
  3. Fertility program
  4. Resistant Soils
  5. Crop Rotation

Habitat Modification

  1. Hedgerows
  2. Cover Cropping
  3. Inter-planting
  4. Harbor strips
  5. Beneficial insect inundative releases (Green lace wings, pirate bugs, etc.)

Disrupting Insect Cycles

  1. Disruptors
  2. Feed Deterrants
  3. Plant Defense Boosting
  4. Reducing Insect Populations While Maintaining Beneficials
    1. they use selective pesticides such as Bt and Spinosad
  5. Pyrethrins, a natural extract of chrysanthemums that kills most insects. As these can majorly disrupt beneficial populations as well, they avoid using them unless absolutely necessary.

Soil Fertility

Our soils are a reservoir of nutrients, microbes, and water. Goal: maintain or increase the availability of nutrients that plants need to maintain health and produce an abundant harvest Methods: Mimic the recylcing of organic matter in nature, on the farm. Understand which nutrients are leaving and replace them.

  1. Soil testing
  2. Petiol (plant tissue sampling)

Cover cropping: (mainly vetch and barley)

This is the simplest way to build soil organic matter (carbon). Cover cropping is growing a crop to disc into the soil that increases the soil carbon. This additional organic matter is feed for the millions of microbes and other critters that live in the soil and allows them to thrive. They in turn play a critical role in decomposing this plant matter and making the nutrients it contains available to subsequent crops.

Returning of crop residue to soil:

After harvest, we return all remaining parts of the plant back to the soil to become food for the soil microbiological community. This practice also results in increased soil carbon.

Maintain conditions conducive to microbiological health:

Maintain soil moisture, proper PH, and protection from sun and harsh weather

Crop rotation:

Proper crop rotation breaks up disease cycles as pests fond of a certain crop are interrupted and allows time for soil to build up nutrients previously use by last crop

Minimum Tillage:

Soil disruption can be harmful to micro-biotic soil communities. By keeping tillage practices to a minimum, we can be less disruptive while also reducing soil compaction and erosion.

Irrigation

Their water comes from wells and surface water.

Ways of delivering the water:

  1. buried drip, installed about 10” below the plant, through an underground network of PVC pipes.
  2. sprinklers (used sparingly)
    1. Used mainly in spring months to establish transplants and germinate seeds
    2. sometimes to pre-irrigate some fields prior to planting. This allows them to germinate weeds so that they can cultivate them out before seeding or transplanting (let them grow then kill them).
  3. flood (used sparingly)
    1. involves running water on the surface and allowing it to slowly sink into the soil, is used for crops like alfalfa or grain.

Food Safety

They have an assessment of their fertilizers, water sources, hygiene practices, facilities, produce handling and packing, and more, which they give to GMP and GAP Can I see it?

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