AdAgrA Conference 2025: Growing Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Level 3 Advanced Topics

John Dysinger

Weather or Not Part 1

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here, and we thank you for the opportunity to learn and grow.

Lord, we know that you created this earth, and that means you also created weather.

We know that because of sin and because of choices man has made, that things may not be anything like you originally planned.

But Lord, help us just to learn and grow today, and help us to come to a deeper appreciation of weather and how it works.

So it's interesting that even Jesus back, you know 2, 000 years ago knew some Some well, you've heard red sky at night sailors delight or something along those lines But that's from the Bible Matthew 16 2 & 3 he answered and said to them when it is evening You say it will be fair weather for the sky is red and in the morning It will be foul weather today for the sky is red and threatening Hypocrites, you know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.

You know, unfortunately, I feel like we can't even discern the face of the sky in this day and age, so we're Really hypocrites, I guess.

So let's see what we can learn about weather here in this first hour.

Webster's defines weather as the state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness.

The Cambridge Dictionary adds, especially at a particular time in over a particular area, so The weather is what is happening right now where you are.

We hear a lot about climate change, but climate is the long-term pattern of weather in a particular area.

It's a region's weather patterns usually tracked for at least 30 years.

You know, what happens this year is not climate.

But if that continues over a long period That's the climate and you're probably familiar this Coloring is very different on here You're familiar with the the climate zones the different hardiness zones Are you familiar with that you should be you're not That is based on data Over a long period of time, but it is changing when we started farming we were in 6b now we're in 7 So it has changed And it will continue to change.

Well everyone on earth is directly affected by the weather, right?

But there's no sector of industry more weather dependent than agriculture.

Understanding weather can help you make better decisions on the farm or in the garden.

So I think, I'll just tell you, I taught the first half of this class last year and unfortunately there was a recording issue so it didn't get on audio verse But I learned a lot in preparation for that class.

And it's made my life so much fuller, I guess you could say, because now I can, I understand what's going on around us, you know, we're in a high-pressure situation right here right now Because it's clear and cold Just a lot of things that I really didn't understand so completely before?

I'll say this, we used to have an Amish family living on our farm for a few years and you know he would tell me if it was going to rain soon and stuff.

Because he's not looking at the weather app.

But back in the day, and for those who don't have technology and they're in tune with nature, they understand these things.

So there are 6 main components of weather.

Temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, and cloudiness.

Together these components describe the weather at any given time.

Now I think temperature is pretty obvious, right?

We know it's hot, it's cold, it's wonderful, you know, somewhere in between.

If we all had our druthers, we'd probably like to live in San Diego or somewhere where it's always mid-70s in the daytime, you know.

We lived in Kenya near Nairobi, which is actually almost a mile high, 5, 000 feet.

And the temperature there was amazing year round, you know.

But hey, most of us don't live in a moderate climate like that, so we know about temperature.

Atmospheric pressure, super important, but A lot of us don't really understand that, how that works.

Humidity, wind, I mean we feel the wind but we probably don't know much about how it works.

Humidity, precipitation, again you understand the basics of it.

Cloudiness, we'll talk a little bit about that.

So that's what we'll be looking at here, but ultimately the sun is the driver of all weather on earth.

It's solar run, and the sun and the differentiations in the temperature are what really drive this.

So let's start with atmospheric pressure, also known as air pressure or barometric pressure.

And we don't feel it because we're used to it and you know, I think it's 14 psi, No.

So you think of how many square inches on your body, and you're talking about hundreds of pounds pressing down on your body.

Why don't I feel like I'm carrying this heavy weight all the time?

You know, it's pushing up as well as down.

Now we also know, at least I think you know, that cold air sinks and hot air rises, but cold air not only sinks, but it spins outward clockwise.

So cold air falls and spins clockwise as it falls, and that causes high surface pressure.

If air has weight and it's being pushed down, that's going to increase the pressure, right?

So high pressure is cold air pushing down.

High pressure on, that's usually on a weather map you'll see an H is considered stable with clear calm happy weather so think of H for happy so high pressure means clear I I should have looked more carefully when I was coming over here, but I don't think you're seeing any clouds out there Because it's high pressure right now So high pressure is calm stable weather The higher the elevation the lower the pressure Does that make sense?

There's less air up there, so it's not pushing down as hard.

So that's why, if any of you live at altitude or you've been camping at altitude, you've got to adjust the amount of time to cook stuff, right?

That's just part of atmospheric pressure.

Hot air, on the other hand, we know that hot air rises, hot air balloons go up, right?

So hot air rises and spins inward counterclockwise.

So it's spinning inward counterclockwise, so it's spinning inward counterclockwise, high pressure is spinning out clockwise.

Let me get my circles right, so high pressure is going this way, low pressure is going this way.

And think about it this way, if the air is going up, there's less pressure on the ground, right?

It's almost like a vacuum going up into the sky, it's pulling the air up, and so it's a low pressure system there when the air is warm.

Low pressure on a weather map is considered unstable, leading to stormy, wet, lousy weather.

So L for lousy, H for happy, High pressure is clear, low pressure tends to be cloudy, stormy, rainy weather.

A mercury reading of between 29.8 and 30.2, this is barometric pressure, is considered normal, anything above that would be high pressure and below would be low pressure.

The speed at which the pressure drops can indicate the severity of the storm.

So on your weather apps, you'll see, you know, it'll show the pressure and you'll usually show up a arrow pointing up or, you know, level or down.

If it's going down you know that very likely you're headed for stormy weather.

If it's pointed up then that's a very good chance that the weather's going to be good.

If it's pointing, if it's dropping very quickly, that's when you have hurricanes and stuff, when you have super, super precipitous drops in the pressure.

This is basic, but I realize if it's not something you've been exposed to much, It can be a bit much all at once here.

I mean, it's really pretty simple actually.

You know, we talked about low pressure goes where?

Weather or Not Part 2

For those of you who weren't here the last round, this half we're going to talk about ways we can actually control the weather better.

Notice I have control in quotation marks because on some level if we think we can control it we're fooling ourselves, right?

But there are things we can do to mitigate some of the effects of it.

And again I will just say right up front here, I'm a fairly – well, we've been growing undercover for many years.

So hoop houses is a very good first level of control, but only in the last 2 or 3 years have we actually started getting into more what I would call climate-controlled stuff.

So we're very much new at it, and I'm still learning a lot.

So I would say this is not gonna be a really advanced class just because I'm not that advanced myself yet But with that in mind, let's get into this Controlling the weather in a very small way.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just have a remote control and say, okay, let's turn the heat up a little bit, right, or turn it down a little bit.

But as we pointed out last time, there's 6 main components of weather, temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, and cloudiness.

I don't know any practical way to control atmospheric pressure or cloudiness, you know, there's not much you can do about those, But the other variables have some degree of control at least, and so we will be talking about those other variables.

Let's start with temperature, that's maybe 1 of the most basic, And I've tried to list these things kind of in order of complexity, I guess you could say.

So if it's too cold, the first thing you can do is add floating row covers, which is what you see in the picture here, just big blankets basically.

And those will, depending on the thickness of the row cover, they'll give you anywhere from 2 to 6 or maybe even 8 degrees of protection if you get a really thick 1.

But then if that's not enough, then you can add a layer of plastic, and that will add a whole other level of protection.

I will just caution you with plastic, you've got to be careful with plastic because it's going to hold in all the humidity, Whereas floating row cover allows some moisture to go through it, it's permeable, plastic is not permeable, so it's going to hold everything in and it can cause other issues with too much moisture.

So if you're adding plastic, like years ago when we were starting out we were using a lot of quick hoops which would be like a metal conduit that would cover 2 beds and we would put row cover over that and then when it got really cold we'd put plastic over it.

I mean we actually harvested marketable lettuce after it had been below 0.

So it works, but I'll just tell you it's a pain pulling that plastic on and off and keeping it on when the wind blows and everything.

So it works, but just understand there are challenges.

And then, of course, the next step would be adding a second layer of plastic with blown air in between the layers.

So we're talking about now an actual greenhouse with double-layer plastic.

The 2 layers with the air in between gives a lot more insulation than a single layer, although it's still not a lot of insulation.

It's not a very efficient heat-holding apparatus, I would say that.

And then after that, well, so let me just say this.

Plastic, if you add plastic, that plastic obviously in the daytime if the sun's shining, it's going to really heat it up under there and that's another reason why you've got to be really careful if you're doing some kind of low tunnels.

If you have plastic and sun, even if it's cold out, it can really cook those things in there.

Have you tried the 1 that has a hole in it?

I have not tried the plastic with holes, So yeah, I can't speak to that specifically.

But the point I'm making here is when the sun goes down, it doesn't take long at all before the air inside a single-layer greenhouse is going to be almost the very same as outside.

Now if you add a second layer of plastic with air in between, you're going to get maybe 3 or 4 degrees increased temperature at night, but in my opinion it's not enough to justify the second layer of plastic.

So in my mind, this is my opinion, if you're not going to heat it, just use 1 layer of plastic.

If you're going to heat it, then you definitely want to use 2 layers because of the insulating effect.

So once you get to the next step of adding heat, the most common and most readily available and I would say most economical as far as actually setting it up is just your standard propane or natural gas heaters.

That's what 95 percent of greenhouses have and it's just usually a forced air heater that runs on propane or natural gas, then of course you can get into alternative fuels, you know, used oil or diesel or wood, you know, wood heaters.

I would encourage you with the advice that Elliot Coleman encouraged me with years ago, and that is start with something you know works, and then if you want to get into alternative – it's always good to have a backup.

So ideally you really have 2 heat sources because 1 could fail, right?

So start with a standard propane heater or natural gas if you have it where you are.

And then if you want to experiment with, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of things people do.

You know, 1 thing to me is fascinating is heating with compost, you know, running pipes through your compost pile and then running them through.

But those are all what I would call alternative heat sources that they may not always work as well as you need them to.

And then this last 1 down here, geothermal options, that in my mind is the most promising And I'm definitely looking into it because we're spending a lot of money on propane right now.

We – excuse me – We are not trying to grow heat-loving plants in the winter.

We made that mistake years ago and learned that that's not very economical, at least in our circumstances.

So we're just trying to grow cool weather crops, basically keep it above freezing in there.

And there's a fair bit of experimenting with running pipes just, I guess, ideally 6 feet down in the ground and using fans to force air through the pipes.

And the temperature down 6 feet is going to be the same year round, and it's what is it, 48, 50, something like that.

So for us in the winter, that would be amazing to keep it heated at 250 with just paying for an electric fan blowing.

You know, that would save us a ton of money.

So that is an option I would encourage you to look into.

Obviously, if you don't have your own backhoe and stuff, it's going to take a bit of expense to install that.

And theoretically, it could cool the house some in the summer.

I don't think that, I say theoretically because I think the power of the sun is going to largely overwhelm any cooling effect but yeah, theoretically it's going to bring some cool air in the summertime.

So those are kind of ways you can control the temperature from easy to complex.

And then if it's too hot, first line of defense would be shade cloth.

That does make a significant difference from our experience.

And depending on where you live, for us in Tennessee, we have found that 30% shade is all we want to do.

If we go up to 50% Now, if any of you were in my son's lettuce 1 this morning, that's kind of an exception.

We do cover the lettuce with 50 percent shade just for 2 weeks though, But from our experience, covering a greenhouse in 50% shade, stuff really stretches out, and you know, like getting lettuce and stuff, you don't get nice heads.

They're just kind of ill-formed and not very good.

So that would be my recommendation there.

Then fans, fans really don't control the temperature as much as they do just, It feels cooler because of evaporative cooling, but it definitely moves the air, which can help with humidity and stuff too.

And then For those of you who aren't in the southeast, you can start looking at some of these other ones.

Cooling walls, are you familiar with a cooling wall where it basically looks like a large radiator but it's actually more, I don't know what it's made of exactly, but it's just paper stuff, looks like cardboard or something, that they drip water down and then fans are sucking the water through there and so it's just evaporative cooling is what it is.

They use them in homes too, swamp coolers they call them.

But what they say is that if you have relative humidity above 60 percent, it's not going to work very well because you just don't get enough evaporation.

And then an alternative to that would be a misting system that you can install in your greenhouse.

It usually requires a pretty high pressure because you want a really fine mist.

And again, it's just all about as the water evaporates, it cools.

So again, there's a reason why a lot of big greenhouse operations are in Arizona and stuff, because it's very dry there and they can do those kind of things.

Then the last thing here for too hot, it's not really a cultural, well I guess it is a cultural thing, but it's using more heat resistant varieties You know In in the Johnny's catalog you look for the little Sun symbol that means it's It handles the Sun it handles high temperatures pretty well.

So just, you know, like broccoli is a classic example.

Some, you know, Johnny's has a little chart that shows how tolerant it is to heat and how tolerant it is to cold.

If you're planting in the spring and your springs tend to heat up very quickly, go for those heat-resistant varieties.

Okay, now let's move on to wind, controlling wind.

If any of you are from the Midwest, that can be an issue especially.

And to me it's fascinating to to drive through the Midwest and see the old home places, you know, the old farmhouses.

They're almost always, you know, they have windbreaks around them.

They knew, they knew what we don't always know anymore.

But you know, if you're going to block the wind, planting a windbreak is a great place to start.

So you know, obviously you can think about just planting your garden on the, I call it the leeward side.

It looks like leeward, but the sailors call it leeward.

But not the windward side, The other side of a house or something that you know that can block the wind Or you know plant a row of bushes or shrubs or trees that will That will prevent that and preferably evergreen because you know much of your wind or many times the wind is more in the winter and if it's a deciduous thing it's not gonna block it as much.

They say that the protected area of a windbreak can be up to 30 times its height.

So if you have a well-established windbreak, some kind of trees that are 30 feet tall, that's going to give you 30 times 30 is 900, Right?

Obviously the further out you go, the less protection there's gonna be, but don't underestimate the power of a windbreak.

Our experience with hoop houses suggests that it's best to orient the hoop houses with the prevailing wind.

So If you have the hoop house in – most of our winds come from the west.

If you have them into the wind, we've had – well, actually, we've never had any damage from a hoop house located – some of our hoop houses are located east-west and some are north-south.

The north-south ones are the ones that we've lost the plastic on.

Joshua Dysinger

Field to Fridge: A Deep Dive Into Harvest & Processing Part 1

So I've been actively in agriculture and market gardening my whole life.

I have for, I don't even really know, honestly, probably 6 or 7 years been managing our harvest and sales year round.

In the summer, that's my main focus in the winter.

I'm also managing the whole Production, so that's the experience that I have This you know, it says an advanced class.

I think it could fit better in just like the market gardening class.

It's not, I mean, it's hard for me to know sometimes how advanced it is because I experience it and I know it and it doesn't feel advanced but then to people getting into it, it can feel more overwhelming.

So, hopefully we can cover all the bases, but I would say that it's very much focused towards market gardening and people that are interested in that more than just you know home gardening or homesteading or anything like that.

So let's start with a word of prayer and we will get going.

Dear Heavenly Father we thank you for this morning, We thank you for the sunshine and the warmth, and we just thank you for this time that we can all come together to learn and share what what we have learned.

I would just pray that this this meeting will be a blessing and people will come away from it with new insight and knowledge to take to their own individual farms.

We just thank you for hearing our prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so the first part we're going to focus on harvest, harvest tools, harvest methods, all that kind of stuff.

We try to keep a very simple lineup of tools and the things that we use.

Originally, We bought a lot of different knives, different, a lot of different tools for harvesting, but we have settled on a very simple combination of a Victorinox and some snips.

We have found that the ARS snips are the best.

There's a lot of different ones that probably are relatively comparable, but these are the ones that we use.

So the Victorinox knives you can find most places.

Farmer's Friend has them, Johnny's, I'm sure you can get them on Amazon.

I mean they're not even, you know, Victorinox is not like a farm brand so you can get them anywhere but they have Definitely kind of taken hold of the harvest knife and it's what most people use.

So we use that for pretty much all, we don't use any other knives, so we use that for all harvests.

Harvest the snips we use for a lot of fruiting stuff, so Peppers Eggplant Sometimes we use them for like pruning roots on onions or garlic or scallions.

A lot of these things that I don't have pictures of in future slides.

I'll have pictures so you can you can see the exact ones we use but We use 2 different harvest oats.

So 1 of them is a big green Almost 2 bushel.

I think it's like 1 and three-quarter bushel Tote, so we use that for all greens we use it for We use it for most things honestly put even potatoes carrots they get kind of heavy when they're full of full of those things but we use it for most things.

So the second tote that we use is a shallow, I don't know the actual size of it, but it's a shallow tote.

We use it mostly for tomatoes, Tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, things that you don't want to stack deep.

So we're just putting 1 layer as to not bruise them.

So anything that's more prone to bruising or that kind of thing we'll use in the yellow totes stacked 1 layer.

Belly bucket, we use a belly bucket, and there's also a picture of that coming up.

It's straps over your shoulders and a bucket in front of you.

That way you can harvest hands free on some of the stuff that you are moving down a bed quickly harvesting.

We use it for a lot of like squash and zucchini.

It can be a little bit awkward for stuff when you're bending over to harvest Because the ones that we have aren't really like attached around your waist.

They're just over your shoulder It's when you bend over it can kind of swing in your way But for the most part it's still it's still the the most effective Harvest belly bucket that we've used so you can see on those things you're looking at minimal costs for getting into for having the The harvest tools you need the totes.

I saw them on online on, let me see what I wrote down, Glacier Valley I think it was called.

Farmer's Friend, I think is trying to get them in stock and sell them, but I believe it was Glacier Valley online, but you can search like harvest totes online.

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Level 3 Advanced Topics

Field to Fridge: a Deep Dive Into Harvest & Processing Part 2

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Parts

Weather or Not Part 1

56m

Weather or Not Part 2

1h 1m

Field to Fridge: A Deep Dive Into Harvest & Processing Part 1

1h

Field to Fridge: a Deep Dive Into Harvest & Processing Part 2

59m

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