Basic information for success at your home or farm. In this class you will learn how to avoid some of the common pitfalls that lead to blossom end rot, cracking and other common issues. Learn how to have the sweetest tasting fruit ever!

AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

<p>Basic information for success at your home or farm. In this class you will learn how to avoid some of the common pitfalls that lead to blossom end rot, cracking and other common issues. Learn how to have the sweetest tasting fruit ever!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Session 5

Darren Greenfield

Tomatoes

Dear Father in heaven, we are very grateful to be here and to be learning how we can work with you in growing crops and just learning about how amazing you are to provide for us in the way of cooperating with our efforts and causing the plants to grow and giving us a wonderful harvest that brings joy to our hearts.

Thank you, Father, for the pleasure that you give us and we pray that as we spend this time together in this class that it will be beneficial.

I pray that you will help me to communicate effectively.

And thank you for being with us in Jesus name.

Okay, this is a class on growing tomatoes.

There's probably, we could be here for several days to go through all the intricacies of growing tomatoes.

I'm not an expert in growing tomatoes I've been growing them for commercially for 6 years.

What I'm sharing with you today is from my experience I haven't gone and researched all the textbooks and pulled out all this data and information to try to share with you and impress you with the knowledge that I have.

I'm only sharing with you what I have experienced myself.

I wish Arthur was up here teaching because he has a much greater knowledge growing, especially in greenhouses.

But they asked me to do the class, so I will share with you what God has taught me.

And first of all, I want to say that I'm not a big reader, so I don't go and do a lot of research.

I learn much better from going and talking to people, observation, seeing what they're doing and learning from them.

And so I read when I'm stuck and I pray and I find that God is the best instructor.

He's promised in Isaiah 28 that He will give us wisdom And wisdom comes from experience and then using that experience and knowledge and applying it in a wise way.

So sometimes we make mistakes and we have failures and that's part of learning wisdom.

So if you think, well I've learned all this information, then you go and you try and it doesn't work.

Well God is still in the process of teaching you.

We grow many varieties and we're situated in California in the foothills, 2300 foot elevation facing towards South Tahoe and we grow on terraces where we Don't have the ideal soil But God has blessed and we've had amazing results and I've may had some Not so good results some years as well But it's all part of the learning process and you have a whole another year to wait to implement the changes that you know you need to make.

The cord here is very short so if I move this way I'm blocking someone else but I will...

Yes okay sorry I did not see the mic we will use whoops we'll use that maybe that'll help I don't have a loud voice there we go.

So growing tomatoes Please save your questions until the end of the presentation.

We've been asked that because the quality of recording is hindered for audio verse.

And so I'll try to save some time, but I've got a lot to go through.

And so is there going to be a roundtable for a discussion that includes this class?

I'm not sure if there is, but I will stay afterwards if you have questions if we end and our time is up.

So I always like to research Spirit of Prophecy to try and see if there's any information because I believe our best source to learn from is the inspired source and I found this and it's not necessarily inspired as far as what is told about how to grow, but it was interesting to me that in the fourth volume of the biography on Ellen White that it says this, the garden is the exercise ground for my workers.

She's talking about her secretaries, the literary assistants that she had and she says early and late the girls are at work in the garden when they are off-duty It is better for them and more satisfactory than any exercise they can have And then this other statement same volume page 27.

Sorry 271 I could not persuade Marion to ride, could not get her free from her writings, but now she has her interest awakened.

And I have no fears but that she will get out of her chair and work in the garden.

This garden of flowers is a great blessing to my girls and they are working with the tomato raising, planting and caring for the tomatoes.

And so if you read much about her gardening experiences and farming experiences you will find that she had extensive crops.

I mean not just a little few raised beds, but extensive crops and she was very active herself and going out early in the morning and working the garden and she encouraged her workers and she encouraged all of us if you read her counsel to get out and get involved in the garden.

When we're growing tomatoes we have to start with seed and we could talk quite a bit about seed.

So for example, when I was going to school and I was in high school, the school got some sludge from the sewer ponds for the city.

These big huge ponds and all the sludge goes to the bottom and it sits there for I don't know how long, quite a few years and then they dredge it and bring it up and dry it and it's completely you know broken down and decomposed and then they give it away for free.

People would come and get truckloads and take it and use it in their gardens and so forth.

And all of a sudden, what grew out of it?

And it's really struck me the hardiness of tomato seeds.

When you buy a packet of seeds it has the percentage of germination rate.

They've tested it and they might take 100 seeds and 87 of them germinate and so they'll put 87% germination rate on the packet.

So usually for 2 years on most seeds that is true, but as a seed gets older that percentage drops and becomes less and less.

In fact it drops fairly quickly on some seed.

But with tomatoes, typically for 5 years it'll stay pretty true to that percentage rate because it's a very hardy seed.

So what I will mention about getting your source of seed for tomatoes is that, or for any of your, even for home gardening, if you're just a home gardener, if you go to a good catalogue like Johnny's or 1 of these commercial catalogues, rather than going to a garden store where they have these little packets and that's all they have.

The quality of seed is much better when they sell it for commercial purposes than for the home use.

And it's apparently when they collect the seed and they weigh it, the heavier seed is the better quality seed and so that is sold for commercial use and the lighter seed is sold for home gardens and so you don't get the best quality seed typically for when you buy it in those little packets at the garden store.

So when you're looking for seed, look in a good quality catalogue.

And we buy a lot of our seed from Johnny's.

We've found them to be pretty good, but not always.

But they will refund you if it is, but sometimes you've planted it and then it doesn't come up and you lose time.

There are varieties that you can choose that have qualities such as disease resistance, cracking resistance.

There are hundreds of varieties of tomatoes I mean, there's just there's an amazing selection out there.

And so I'm not going to talk During this time about the different varieties.

I will talk about 2 different kinds or 2 different groups of tomatoes but you can find all different qualities and if you know there's a certain disease that you know is common in your area if you're in the Midwest or the eastern states where there's a lot of rain during the summer seasons you're going to have blight and so forth.

So you might want to be looking for resistant varieties that will help you with those issues.

Determinate and sometimes called a bush tomato.

And the indeterminate, well let's talk first about the determinate.

Why would you choose a determinate over a indeterminate type of tomato?

The determinates are a short season tomato.

Some of them that we've grown have gone about shoulder height, but typically they're about 3 feet or even sometimes a little less than 3 feet tall.

If you are growing commercially and you want to target the early market and you want a lot of fruit for that early market, then a determinate is a very good variety.

You get ones that usually the packet will tell you how many days to harvest on it, so you try to get a variety that has the qualities you're looking for and the shortest number of days if you're targeting the early market.

And there's minimal work required because you're not having to do much pruning and in fact you can get away with doing no pruning with them, you just let them grow as a bush and they will set a lot of fruit all at once and typically you'll get a really big harvest within about a month or a little bit more than a month and then it's done.

And actually we grow these in our high tunnel for the early market.

We can get them started about 6 weeks earlier than the outdoor ones and so we get the best price before all the outdoor ones come on and the what I have discovered and this has turned out to be a tremendous blessing growing them in the high tunnel we we harvest them and we sell them for that early market and there's basically we can sell all that we can grow in that green in that little well a 3, 000 foot high tunnel and then the plants just sit there and I don't pull them out, I'm too busy harvesting other crops and I just leave them there.

And then they stay there and there might be a, you know, the odd little bit of fruit that comes off them.

But then in the fall, as the temperatures start dropping in September, they start flowering and they set another crop.

And then because they're under plastic, then in the fall I have another harvest.

Not as big as the 1 in the spring or early summer, but it's actually really a blessing because then you can go back and harvest them when everything outdoors is starting to slow down.

So there is a benefit to using the terminates if you want to target certain seasons.

The determinate, the way it works and grows, the terminal buds set fruit and stop stem growth.

So they just somehow they abort the growing habit of the plant and the plant is self-topping and they say that you can grow them without staking.

My experience has been you need to stake them and we're going to talk about methods of staking them that is really effective for these.

And you don't need to prune the side shooters, let them grow.

If you want bigger size fruit you can prune, but we don't.

Teriz Chuljian

Pamela Dysinger

Raising Entrepreneurial Evangelists

I'm Pam Dysinger, and I'm here to share with you a little bit about raising entrepreneurial evangelists.

There's no point in raising entrepreneurs if they're not going to be evangelists with their business.

And I would say this is a real growing passion that the Lord has placed in my heart, and maybe some of the reasons for that will come out during this presentation.

But God needs entrepreneurs today more than ever before.

And we need to be entrepreneurial today more than ever before.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the privilege to be here and to share.

Lord, I pray that it would not be my words and my thoughts, but that even the things that I've prepared, you would set aside if you see best.

May we be encouraged to be entrepreneurs for the kingdom.

We're going to start by the question, what is an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is 1 who owns and manages and assumes the risks of a business or an enterprise.

So it doesn't mean that you're just a businessman.

All farmers who are farming for a living, they are organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of their business or their enterprise.

Why should we have, why is entrepreneurship important today?

Here's Paul's counsel, We urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more, that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you." Are you familiar with that verse?

The first time I read that verse was many years ago, and it was like, wow, lead a quiet life, mind your own business, and work with your hands.

At that point, we were serving overseas, but God's counsel is, through Paul, is that it's good to lead a quiet life.

Paul led us not only by his words, but by his example.

He was truly a self-supporting missionary.

Wouldn't you say Paul was a self-supporting missionary?

A missionary is a person who undertakes a mission, and especially a religious mission, very enthusiastic and eager about doing a job or supporting a cause.

So we today use that tentmaking term sort of generically like supporting yourself.

If you are a self-supporting person, we kind of think of self-supporting missionaries as tent makers.

Why would you want to own your own business.

I can say that for certain from our experience.

But I believe that there are some very good reasons why you should own your own business.

I mean, I was wishing after that I hadn't called it raising, but I would have called it becoming.

This is really for youth that are coming up and thinking, what am I going to do with my life?

And God needs entrepreneurs whose focus is going to be more evangelistic than just business-minded people.

So, owners can evangelize through their businesses.

That is the reason why you should own your own business.

Because when you're the owner, you can do it your way.

I know of a bank owner who leaves Desire of Ages and spirit of prophecy material on the tables in the banks that he owns.

Now, if you're a teller at the bank, can you do that?

Not a chance, but If you own the bank, you can do it, you can do whatever you want.

If you own the bank, I mean, maybe that's a little bit, a little stretching it, but in this area, you can do what you want.

Another thing, if you own the business, you can have sacred music playing in your business.

There's 1 store that I love to go to, and probably, I mean, it's because of the things that they sell there that I loved and I enjoy, but it's also because the music that they play is sacred.

It's an outwardly, openly, owned by a Christian business.

So, when you own the business, and you own the answering machine, you can put on it whatever kind of music you like.

I mean, don't you find it hard when you call and you have to be left on hold and the music is horrific?

So, but when you own the business, you can put sacred music, sacred CDs.

He always in his office, he plays the most soothing.

When you own the business, you can hire the person at the front desk who's going to be the face of your business who's going to be the person who gives your business the right image.

I know a business that sends out glow tracks in all their packages, Hundreds, hundreds.

Last year I think over a thousand glow tracks went out through just 1 person's business, 1 effort.

If you don't own the business, you can't do that.

Owners can invite God to be their partners.

I know that's a terrible picture, but I want to tell you about this man.

Let me back up and tell you that at ASI this last year, we had, there was a speaker who came from Australia.

And he had a talk called the infidel Christian.

He's a man who's come out of, his parents are serial entrepreneurs.

Multiple businesses, multiple millions, millions of dollars that have come through this family's hands.

And the Lord started him on a journey of recognizing that that wealth was destroying him spiritually and taking him step by step further away from that wealth.

So I read his book and was very inspired.

Now I have not been blessed financially in the world's eyes, But I've been so blessed in so many ways, and I have, I definitely am in total agreement, and it gives me great courage to see wealthy people who are willing to be honest about the corrupting properties of wealth.

In this book, he shares 1 man who was 1 of his mentors, and that is this man here, R.G.

He is perhaps the most inspiring Christian inventor, businessman and entrepreneur the world has ever seen.

A sixth grade dropout, Robert Gilmore, R.G., went on to become the leading earth-moving machinery manufacturer of his day with plants on 4 continents, more than 300 patents to his name and major contributions to road construction and heavy equipment that forever changed the world.

Most importantly, his contributions to the advancement of the Gospel rank him among the greatest of Christian businessmen of all time.

Famous for living on 10% of his income and giving 90% to the spread of the gospel, Litorneau exemplified what a Christian businessman should be.

We have just finished it and it is so inspiring.

You know, he, they lived on less than 10%.

Not only did his business give away millions and millions of dollars, He just handled his business in the most Christ-like way.

Okay, owners can use their businesses as a channel of blessing.

When we were in New Zealand recently, we went to Subway very early in the morning, and we got talking with the lady who worked there, and she told us that the business was owned by a man who was from the Church of the Brethren.

I don't know that much about it, but she was very, she clearly thought we would come with a bias, and so She kind of was quick to defend them, like we would have some negative thing.

And people say they're a cult, but they're not really a cult.

They're really good people, and they own so many businesses in this town, and they've changed this town.

I just thought, wow, what if it were Adventists?

Larry Lesher

Michelle Lesher

Eat Your Greens!

Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for the day.

Again, we thank you for your watch care and mercy over us.

Father, I ask that as we have this discussion about Salad Mix and the different concepts behind Salad Mix and why we do what we do, that you would work through me to be a blessing to these folks, your people, that they might be able to do something in their community that helps them to stand out for you.

Lord, and as I present, I pray that I would be working with you and not against you, and that you would labor in me and through me to minister to your people.

We thank you for the opportunity to share these things.

Lord, I pray they hear it, but not just be hearers, but they would put these things into action, they'd put their hand to the plow, and they'd be about your business.

This is our prayer in Jesus' name, and for his sake we pray, amen.

And we had a hard time growing head lettuce.

And so this is our fourth season and the head lettuce actually started working So that's why Larry's he doesn't usually smile in pictures, but you kind of see his teeth there.

I'm pretty sure he's happy in this picture and then this Picture on the top there well, sorry this is Larry Lesher I'm supposed to be introducing him, so that's Larry.

This is Larry Michelle is my name and We both Are stewards of the farm Eastward Gardens.

We've been farming this ground for 5 years.

Previous to that, we were at the Black Hills Health and Education Center, where Larry ran their farm for 4 years.

And then previous to that, Larry farmed in Seattle, Washington for 4 seasons.

So this is our 12th season, this past season of farming.

So a lot of what Larry learned about salad mix production was in Seattle and that experience in Seattle area.

And then I've been working as a nurse and a dietitian and a lactation consultant for many many many years and my dream was to quit my Job and start farming with Larry full-time and that dream came true this past June So we are a family farm now and we both do this full-time and it's been such a blessing.

He loves the farm And so we had to include him in the picture because of that reason.

So All right, so Salad mixes is not as straightforward as 1 Would think or hope that's been my observation when I when I started farming the farm that I interned on they their specialty with salad Mix when I say their specialty with salad mix I don't mean they did a lot of salad mix like it wasn't like a big salad mix farm It was a very mixed diverse farm but salad mix was a big seller at the market and we did bitters mix and we did regular salad mix and So we cut it all by hand we I Learned a lot and And when I came to Salad Mix, my understanding of Salad Mix was if you were really, really adventurous, you got the 1 with all the different lettuces in it, you know, at the salad bar, whatever.

And You got the little cherry tomato on the side, and so that's how I understood salad mix as a young person growing up And when I came to this farm, I was just like this is crazy like this is nothing like I've ever seen And so I got very interested in it because to me It was if you saw the first slide it was like an art project Like all these different colors and textures and just all this possibility And so I just really enjoyed it and so when we started our own farm the next year we We started looking at salad mix in a real serious way on our farm and So we did it the same way I'm going to get to how we do it and why we did it But where I learned was on this farm in Seattle.

We actually introduced a whole nother branch We didn't do the bitters mix which I wish we would but most people don't like bitter things unfortunately.

They're usually very nutrient-packed, like if you take a red-ribbed dandelion green, they're probably 1 of the best things in the garden for you, but no 1 will eat them generally and So we shift it to what we call a a spicy blend and so I'll explain that to you later I just wanted to add that salad mix has become our best seller at the market.

So it's what draws people there week after week.

We have dedicated customers that come just for the salad mix.

And then sometimes they'll dabble and get other things.

It's a little more labor intensive, which we're going to go over.

But it has become our niche and our bestseller so I don't know that you know there's different things for different people I think of Connor Creek more he does it totally different than I do it.

Some of the folks that I know that do it different ways, they're all very successful at what they do, and so what I do may not work for you.

And so I want to give you kind of a broad scope of different options like different ways people do it But ultimately it's going to come down to you're talking to me And this is how I do it and so I'm going to go through how we do it at the end And kind of a more detailed fashion So you can see up there so You can buy and people are probably familiar with So these are the different general different ways that things happen you have mixed blends Which are if you ever bought a mixed blend seed packet if you've ever seen If you've ever seen a mixed blend seed packet they they they tend to Just try to figure out what seeds are going to grow at the same rate blend them together to give you a multiple Mix of lettuces and different Other things depending on the kinds of mix you get They have pluses and minuses You can put those down relatively you can use small spaces.

You just put your blend in and Everything comes up together It has its pluses and its minuses because you don't get to select any of those seeds.

You don't get to decide what's in your blend.

You don't get to select what you get in the blend.

And so for me, that's kind of complicated because The thing that happens is 1 thing will grow really fast.

Your mustard greens, like if you get a spicier blend, the mustards take off and your lettuce is a little runty.

It's yellow because it can't see the light and now you've got this really funky blend.

So when you're picking your blends, if you decide to go that route, you need to kind of experiment with them to see which ones are gonna really actually grow at the same rate.

It's really important, otherwise they just look funny and they don't work right.

Here's a picture to show you kind of the different rates and the different sizes of them.

So like, if you look in there, that's a mixed blend, but if you look at it, this is a ruby streaks mustard That's a mizuna mustard.

That's an Osaka purple mustard Do you I don't see any lettuce?

That's not a mustard blend There's lettuce Underneath those leaves I will I can almost guarantee you and so this is the problem that I see with this blend most of the time and so if you're going to do lettuces then you need to kind of get the packages that are all lettuce and not the spicier ones and You know that that's you just have to if you're going to decide to go that way you decide you know what works for you So that's 1 thing And even if it works for you at 1 time of the year Lettuce doesn't grow the same in the heat as it does in the cold neither does mustards And so it may work for you 1 point in the year, but another point of the year It may not work right and so they get a little bit complicated in that way And so we've opted not to do it that way Because I just found that it you just don't get a quality salad mix out of that And again, I'm saying that John Martin has done it for years I think he's switching somewhat the way he does it, but he's made a perfectly fine living doing it and so People do successfully grow things that way So I'm not saying you can't do it, I'm saying for me, I've found those problems didn't work for me.

The other way that's becoming very, very popular is Salanova.

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Series

Session 5

Tomatoes

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Tomatoes

1h 1m

Raising Entrepreneurial Evangelists

59m

Eat Your Greens!

1h 9m

Pardon Me, Your Weeds are Showing

1h 8m

Soil Tests: What They are Saying

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine