This course will be all worms! Learn how worms can determine your soil health and how to cultivate them. We will also be demonstrating how to build and easy worm bin with minimum inputs.
Instructors: F.A.R.M. & Texas Worm Ranch
Skills Taught
- Build/ install infrastructure
- Build soil health & productivity (e.g., make compost, plant and manage cover and catch drops, integrate crop and livestock production, install crop rotations, add organic amendments if and as required)
- Monitor ecological impact of all production activities
- Implement conservation practices & measures (e.g., buffer strips, water quality management projects, wildlife habitat improvement, strip cropping)
- Cultivate soil
Now that you have multiplied your worm collection, use the castings for compost tea. Compost tea is a great way to love your plants naturally. Compost Tea is a Liquid Gold fertilizer for flowers, vegetables and houseplants. … Very simply, it is a liquid, nutritionally rich, well-balanced, organic supplement made by steeping aged compost in water.
Skills Taught:
- Benefits of compost tea
- How to improve crop growth with compost tea
- Nutrient retention and availability of soil
- Build stronger soil structures with compost tea
Following discussion, we will demonstrate how to build a compost tea brewer!
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This session you will learn how to know your markets and grow what they demand. Conduct market research, Building relationships with customers both wholesale and retail; promoting your farm and marketing plans
We will also be learning about implements for no till gardening. Participants will learn how to use a paper pot transplanter and seeder.
- Sell farm products & services
- Distribute farm products (e.g. deliver, ship)
- Obtain customer feedback
- Keep good records (e.g. customer comments, competition, price changes, sales, promotional activities)
- Conduct market research (e.g. research industry, competition, markets/customers, production potential, marketing strategies)
- Prepare marketing plan (e.g. pricing, marketing strategies, logo, product line, target customers, sales potential, promotion, product placement, labor needs, consumer trends, name, organic/”green” label options, potential for value-adding)
- Research legal requirements (e.g. zoning, organizational structure, product handling, liability, tax abatement options, development rights)
- Prepare annual/seasonal marketing plan (e.g. marketing strategies, sales outlets [on-farm, farmers’ markets, retail, wholesale], pricing, value adding).
- Monitor market conditions (e.g. price, supply, competition, consumer trends)
- Develop promotional materials
- Promote farm products & services (e.g. advertise, participate in “buy local” or “green label” campaigns)
- Obtain necessary supplies (e.g. scales, receipt books, cash box, packaging, labels)
- Contact buyers (e.g. retail and/or wholesale)
- Inventory tools, equipment & supplies
- Acquire necessary tools, equipment & supplies (e.g. purchase, borrow, rent)
- Monitor condition of tools & equipment
- Maintain tools & equipment