Strategies for Growing Tomatoes and Building Soil with Ben Hartman (FSFS172)

FSFS172_BenHartman_Soil

Diego: [00:00:00] Today, it's all about building your soil in growing tomatoes with farmer

Ben Hartman of Clay Bottom farm. Welcome to farm small, farm smart. I'm your host Diego

DIEGO. Today's episode of farm small farm smart is brought to you by PaperPot Co.

That's the company that I run, this is a company that I started with the goal of helping you

make life easier on the farm. I realize how hard business is, and I realize you need to control

the controllables. You need to take things that could be easier and make them easier and

tools like the Paperpot transplanter, and the Jang seeder and nursery flats that are going to

last you forever make your life easier.

They don't replace work. They just make work faster, easier, and maybe even a little better.

You can learn more about everything that we're doing and all the tools that we do sell at

PaperPot Co. Thank you for your support.

Today's episode focuses and soil in tomatoes with Ben Hartman, farmer at Clay Bottom

farm.

I started this episode initially thinking it was going to be about soil. But it kind of started off

going straight towards tomatoes. So the first chunk of this episode is about growing

tomatoes or creating the optimum conditions for growing tomatoes. What you're going to

hear today is Ben's take on tomatoes.

It's a little bit different than Conor Crickmore's take on growing tomatoes, which you

might've heard in an episode a few weeks ago, but there's also a lot of overlap. And given

that tomatoes are a big cash crop for a lot of small farms, I think you're going to get a lot out

of this episode. And don't worry if tomatoes aren't really your thing. We eventually get on to

talking soil and building the optimum soil.

Today, it's tomatoes and soil with farmer Ben Harmon. Let's jump right into it.

Diego: [00:02:11] Ben, last episode, we talked about building soil from the ground up and

starting out your farm. Now that that soil has been built, it comes time to farm it.

When it comes time to farming, you look at the crops that you grow in two categories,

tomatoes and everything else. Let's start with tomatoes. When it comes to building good soil

for growing tomatoes. Where do you start?

Ben Hartman: [00:02:33] Uh, yeah, sure. I, and to be honest, the way I think of it is there's

two crops. There's the tomatoes. And then there's everything else because tomatoes are

highest profit margin crop itself, a bulk of our incomes come from those. And so we're more

particular with them and they're more particular nutritionally and then everything else is

pretty easy, relatively speaking.

And so I was thinking, I'd start by talking about how we do the tomato fertility program and

then moving everything else.

So the key with tomato production is understand the carts versus horses analogy. And so let

me explain that the horses would be things like phosphorus and nitrogen. That's your what's

your tomatoes definitely need but too much, 90 10 in particular, the plant will run away

from you.

Okay. Like a horse, I call those horses and those are� So that can be too much nitrogen in

particular can act like a horse that runs away with an empty cart. Okay. So you have to weigh

down that cart so the horse has something to work with. And you weigh down that cart by

adding the mineral calcium, potassium and other minerals to make sure that you don't have

a green bushy beautiful tomato, but a small number of fruit clusters, if that makes sense.

And so what we do is we'll prepare our soil the same as for every other crop. In their

greenhouse, we have added a couple inches of compost probably three inches, we've got

two separate applications. We're probably up to about three inches, total compost, over two

growing seasons at our new farm here in our tunnel.

And so we've got nice that compost. So we've kept it pretty well on the surface and it's a bit

incorporated, but it's mostly on the surface. And then what we'll do is transplant tomatoes

directly into that. Now the key nutritionally with tomatoes is to get them off to healthy. And

so we did, we spend the money and get Vermont compost for as our container mix.

So, we'll germinate the tomatoes and the Fort light, the Vermont of for light mix. It's an

easier mix to get cross germinated. And then we pot them up a couple of times. We'll pot

them up into 50 cells flat after a couple of weeks. And there everyone about four or five

weeks old, we'll put them up again into four-inch pot.

Okay. And so in the fifties self-plug flats and in a four inch pot raising the Vermont compost,

it has a wonderful rainbow mix of trace minerals. And it's very well balanced in terms of

carts and horses and I like that product. And if I were not using that product, I would be

using Neptune's fish emulsion on a weekly basis.

We make sure we're getting the balance of minerals that are needed for tomatoes. You just

can't skimp on that. Even at a young stage with tomatoes. Yeah, you do not want to skimp.

You'll have yellowing of the leaves. You'll have red coloration under the leaves and you'll

have a weak growth. You'll have weak stems.

And if you have plenty of minerals from the get-go, you got nice thick stems, good capillary

action. And those plants are seven weeks or eight weeks old. And then the rate for

transplanting are going to take off very quickly. Okay. So when we go, when we get to

actually transplanting the tomatoes. So orange pots with nice stocky plants, we're going to

put them in.

And then we are going to use a fertigation probe, but we are supplementing our own

compost. And Neptune�s harvest now has a two-part tomato program and I recommend you

go on their webpage and you can read about the two-part program essentially for the first

half of the season, when you're trying to encourage vegetative growth. They would have a

tomato blend that has a bit more nitrogen phosphorus in it, and maybe a little lighter on the

mineral balance.

And then once you start seeing flowers, once flowers come, then we will switch. Or in

addition to the tomato, and that comes harvest product. We'll switch to their flowering

product, the fruit and flowering product, which will also run through the drip tape and we'll

use their recommended rates that they have.

And we use this simple hose on siphon mixer. It mixes at a rate of, I think, about 16 to one

16 parts or 16 parts water and one part fish emulsion and that's going to ensure that our

plants, when fruit starts setting have, plenty of minerals. And then the other thing we'll do

toward when, especially when fruits are coming on is supplement with potassium sulfate,

and there's no tomato grower.

You've been doing this for long. Uh, for several seasons, been in the game for several

seasons that I know of. Who's not adding some form of potassium for their tomatoes

because tomatoes just sucked potassium out of the ground at a tremendous pace. Okay. So

mostly we look at the plant to determine how much potassium sulfite, or perhaps other

minerals will need.

Last year, I added an amino acid blend that was high in calcium. Some other trace minerals,

too, based mostly on visual observation of how healthy the plant looks. I'll give you just two

things to look for. And there are, we could spend a whole hour on this, but two key things to

look for. If you see a lot of dark green, like John Deere, dark green and curling of the leaves.

Then your horses run away from your car. Your leaves are curling in on themselves. Uh, and

they're large and you don't see a lot of fruit clusters. Your nitrogen is too high. You need to

balance that out with minerals and you can, especially if it's not too late in the season by

mid-season, you can balance it and still get a lot of tomatoes off your plant.

Okay. And then the second thing that you can observe in tomatoes, is to look at the

shoulders of the tomatoes and you should see a tomato ripening up all the way in and

around the shoulders, all the way to the stem of the tomato fruit.

And if you see yellowing or orange and it's hard, it seems almost calcified around that

shoulder, then you're not getting ripening all the way to the middle of the fruit. You can also

slice that fruit in half. You should see it fully ripe everywhere in the interior of that fruit.

So if you're not getting full ripening, that's often a sign of mineral shortage. Often it's

potassium that you're low on. And so they�re blossoming right, there's a lot of things that

you're talking about, but those two are some key points of observation.

And then when the plan is about knee-high, so maybe two or three weeks after transplant

team, we're going to take a petiole sample. So we're going to pull some of the fresher leaves

off the plant and send them into the lab here in Indiana and that lab test will tell us even

more accurately than soil tests what that plant is sucking up from this soil.

So the soil test within this soil, we actually want to know what the plant is uptaking. Yeah,

retrieving from this soil and the petiole samples is the best way to do that and it is more

accurate. And so we'll definitely do want it knee-high we'll sometimes do one again in about

a month to give us more precise information on what we might be short on.

Okay. And then we'll put custom blends together based on the readings of those tests. We'll

keep Neptune�s harvest going throughout the season, but then we'll supplement it as

needed with other products, most of the mineral-based products that make sure we have

healthy plants that can take us late into the season.

I would definitely like to harvest certainly through the end of September and we can get

through the end of October. That's great. But to do that, you've got to have plenty of

nutrition throughout the season.

So one myth about tomatoes is that you can give one dose of fertility at the beginning when

you transplant and that's good enough, but actually they're like human. They like to eat on a

regular basis. And so a lighter, more consistent, more drawn out feedings is the way to go

for tomatoes.

Diego: [00:12:16] Do you approach each season with this mindset, having all this experience,

growing tomatoes and knowing like this is going to be the program?

Because I can say, well, you could take a soil test at the beginning of the season, and here's

what the analysis comes back with. And then you cater your program based upon that. But it

doesn't sound like you do that. It's just like, you know how the tomatoes are going to be,

and then you observe it and then you react based upon that past experience and then

current observations, not just relying on what a soil test says there is in the soil.

Ben Hartman: [00:12:50] I do have a specific program and that we plan to stick to. And my

online course goes in detail like week by week, how that all works. However, what we do is,

throughout the season constantly make adjustments because you never know what the

weather is going to throw out.

And we're going in a different mix of tomatoes all the time. Tomato varieties are all

different, and they all require� They all have different nutritional needs, unfortunately. So

that can be another challenge. The determinants in particular are, they're generally easier to

do, easier to grow than indeterminate and especially heirlooms.

It can be very hard to predict one heirloom tomato from the next what nutritional need it

will have. So we don't zone our tomatoes. They're all on one drip tape zone. We do the best

that we can with the varieties that we have. We'll grow about 10 different tomato varieties

in one greenhouse.

Diego: [00:13:51] I know one thing you don't do from talking to you in the past, and we'll see

in tomatoes in the greenhouse, is you don't graft your tomatoes, and from a lean

perspective, that's one less thing that you have to do.

Do you feel that a grower can substitute fertigation and good soil, or those could be a

substitute for grafting? You know, a lot of people are grafting for vigor or to try and balance

growth, or because they're growing tomatoes in one spot year after year, and they need a

disease package in the rootstock, but with a procedure in good soil, is that a substitute in

your mind for grafting?

Ben Hartman: [00:14:30] I would want to be clear. I had grafted several seasons. And I'm not

currently grafting. And the reason is as you mentioned, just to lean up, it's just one last thing

to do, save $700 on seed cost. And that time of year, when you need to be on top of your...

It's the time of year we're, you know, we're busy doing other stuff and my time on an hourly

wage based on my time was worth quite a bit that time of year.

And so, stop grasping really freed my time up to, to grow other crops that I feel that's made

up for it. And then if we have a yield problem, it's easier for me to just plant more tomatoes

from a labor point of view, than go through the grafting.

So that's what has worked for me. So the disease problems that we were having were not

problems that a graph would necessary take care of. Leaf mold for instance. And so a graft is

gonna help you with soil-borne diseases, but foliar diseases, the graph isn't as predictable in

a helpful way. And so I'm not opposed to grabbing if you have these problems that I graft

will alleviate by all means you should do it. However it's the same with any process. You

should do a process because it removes the type of waste and you don't do it because

everyone else has.

Diego: [00:16:01] You know, one other thing that comes up with tomatoes is rotation.

Moving them from a different area. I've seen your farm layout. You have basically a tomato

tunnel. It's set up to grow tomatoes amongst other things, but you know, like you said,

tomatoes is your most profitable crop.

Do you think that your soil fertility program, these additions of compost will allow you to

continue to grow tomatoes year after year in that same space?

Ben Hartman: [00:16:31] No. Tomato diseases build up over time. At my previous farm, I

had farmed tomatoes, continuously for nine growing seasons in the same location. And I'll

just tell you, anecdotally, and the university research backs this up.

You've got you get a couple of free seasons. However, eventually diseases catch up with you.

And especially after the thick season, something happened, turning point was when years,

five and six, we started to see heavier disease problems with the tomatoes.

And probably because we're planting tomatoes after tomatoes, after tomatoes. Oh, so you

have a couple of options to take care of that. So one in is what we had done, which is take

this skid loader in and take out the tops six or eight inches of soil from the greenhouse. It's

you know, put some earbuds in, so you can listen to music and just spend the afternoon

doing it.

And it's an afternoon well spent. And then you bring in a new compost slash topsoil that

hasn�t had tomatoes grown in it. So that's fairly low. You can also get soil steamers. Pete

Johnson at Pete�s greens sells these beautiful old-fashioned steamers that act water under

pressure.

And so it's a bit like carpet steamers, just industrial-size that you would steam several inches

deep. So you heat your soil several inches deep until pathogen, and you'd also destroy other

biological life in there. I'm not suggesting that there's no downfalls to that approach.

However, with that approach, you do take care of a good bit of cell disease problems, and

you can keep tomatoes in the same place year after year.

Make sure you practice good hygiene with tomato growing from one year to the next. And

at this new farm, I want to be very careful to make sure we're practicing. And so for

instance, we bleach all the pots we're using this. 50 self-plug pots, the four-inch pots, make

sure those go through a bleach solution, wash our hands, sanitize our hands before touching

you're working with it.

Then being careful about who comes into your greenhouse if you've got other growers, even

friends of yours who are tomato producers and if they've been in their greenhouse or not.

As strict as some growers would say, no one can come into our greenhouse. However, if you

got other farmer friends, you know, they've just come out of their diseased tomato

greenhouse maybe the offering a six pack or something in lieu of a tour of your greenhouse

or having look at the side rolling walls and have a see at what's going on in there.

So practicing good hygiene is important. And then another product that we use is oxidate,

OXIDATE is from BioSafeSystems. And it's a broad spectrum bacteria, fungus, and what we'll

do is we'll spray down the entire tunnel before the tomatoes, the transplant, and then we'll

spray it down again once the fruit starts saying so, and then maybe one other time later in

the year.

So as the season goes on, it's just the way of making sure tunnel stays hygienically clean. And

then we're also using� We will do a preventative copper spray. We use a product called

badge, BADGE X2. It's a copper product and we'll do a preventative copper spray on the

tomatoes again, once fruit started setting, to help us get past that the July and August

humps so we can have the later-season tomatoes and prevent some of the blight that can

sometimes happen.

Diego: [00:21:05] You know, and sanitation is a big key to a lot of this, and when a grower

has eliminated amount of space to grow a high profit crop like tomatoes, and like, every

square foot counts. And usually there's a lot of money tied up in that infrastructure so that

square footage is really, really valuable.

When you look at how you're planting tomatoes and the density at which you can plant

them, do you approach planting them denser to get more in, knowing that you have deep

soils, you have organic matter rich soils. You�ve run things, maybe like say a chisel plow,

through there to loosen up the swells.

Does that allow you and do you approach it with, I'm going to put as many as I can in here,

or do you back off on the density, widen out the spacing to let air flow in, give the roots

more room? So disease doesn't become a problem?

Ben Hartman: [00:21:59] Sure. It's a balancing act. You want those tomatoes packed in as

tight as you can because you want the high yield you, want to maximize the square footage

of the greenhouse.

However, there's a point of no return where you can space too closely. The end

determinants. We now space every 12 inches apart a single row, 12 inches, and we'll train

with the two liter system a leaninf lower two liter system on most of the determinants. And

then on some of the determinants, we're switching to using bamboo poles and doing tall

bamboo poles, like nine, 10-foot tall poles.

You can also use. Oh, EMT, as in the EMT conduit, electrical conduit, and doing the basket

weave system, even on indeterminate. And that's sort of�we could talk for a whole session

on that. And again, my course, and I don't want to keep plugging it, but my course had a lot

of videos and talk you through the ins and outs and particulars of those types of trellising

systems.

However, what we do is 12 inches on indeterminate and then 18 inches on determinate and

then on everything, determinate and indeterminate, we're going to prove once you're about

knee-high or higher, we will prune the bottom 10 to 12 inches, just strip them, so there's air

flow circling underneath all of our plants and I found that makes a big difference.

So the early leaves on tomatoes are usually sacrificial. Anyhow, they're not providing

nutrients for either. They're just gonna encourage the bees to crawl up the plant. And so the

sooner you can get rid of those lower leaves, the better. And then we will go with the lean

and lower method on indeterminates and continue to prune and even anything we're going

to stay and leave on in determinants.

We're going to do another heavy pruning on those two, but just one additional pruning. And

then the determinant tomatoes, we're not going to prune any more than that first pruning

of ten to twelve inches.

Diego: [00:24:05] So you put a lot of work into growing these tomatoes. A lot of fertility ends

up in the soil as a result of growing these tomatoes.

Now let's say tomato season's done. It's time to move on to the category of everything that's

not a tomato. How do you utilize the fertility left in that soil for the lower feeders, like the

lettuces. Do you do anything in-between or do you just say, Hey, I'll strip out the tomatoes.

There's fertility there, let's get some plants in it.

Ben Hartman: [00:24:34] So tomato season finishes and as soon as we can, we're going to

get those plants out of the tunnel. We will get the chisel power broad fork in there if we

need to loosen things. And then I typically will add compost to the winter tunnel and

probably not more than an inch and then keep it on the surface and then seed my spinach.

I grow mostly spinach in the winter, Asian greens and some lettuces feed directly into that

compost. And that is all I need to do. And in the greenhouse, I should've said this earlier. I do

not bring animal manure-based compost into the greenhouse. And the reason is I don't want

phosphorus and nitrogen to build up.

And those you'll find high levels of those in animal manures. And so anytime I was going into

the greenhouse, it's just going to be leaf, mold-broken down grass clippings, and some

pasture cuttings. That sort of thing, but mostly leaf mold. The city of Goshen, the town we

live in, delivers leaves to us at no cost and I've got a skid loader. So I make a lot of leaf mold

compost. And that makes a wonderful way to build up the carbon and a rich, rainbow of

trace minerals.

And the idea is that I feel like our trees are farming for our farm partners. The trees are my

farm partners. Cause the tree roots go down deep into the ground as the tree stands up high

above the ground in many cases. So tree roots are sucking out minerals from deep within

the year, and I'm broad range of minerals and they're depositing them in the leaves. And so

tree leaves are a wonderful way to get local trace minerals onto your farm in your plant.

Anyhow, so that's what I'll do as soon as tomatoes are done, compost feed directly into it.

And then that's enough. And even tomorrow's products, we're going to transplant kale into

the greenhouse or early spring under the greenhouse. And there's plenty of fertility in there.

I'm not going to do anything, which is my favorite way to farm is to know that I have plenty

of trace minerals.

Compost is a slow release source of fertility. And so if I have put a couple inches of compost,

ideally three or four inches of compost, across the growing surface, then I know that I've got

several growing seasons ahead of me for many crops that don't need to supplement with

anything.

Okay. So when that kale goes in, there�ll be plenty of nutrients in a greenhouse. I probably

won't need anything. However, I'll see what this spinach is looking like coming out. If I see

anything suggesting weak growth on the spinach, some yellowing of leaves, anything less

than fully robust growth, then I'm going to add feather mule when I transplant the kale.

So feather, you know, I think it was like a 14-0-0 as a very�it's a high nitrogen-fertility

source. And you don't need much just a pinch and then you'll get nice green growth off your

plants and you can get away with feather meal on Crosslight kale and greens and other,

what I call vegetative crops, hay, where you harvest and in green part of the crop, as you

want to push that green growth and you can almost not put too much on the outside of the

greenhouse.

We use a lot of composted duck manure. And, the entire plot outside of the greenhouse has

that leaf mold on it and some grass clippings and pasture cutting. And then on a plant�when

we transplant, if we have vegetative crops going in, I like to add a pinch of composted duck

manure or feather mule or we get, organic chicken place up in Michigan, and they sell

pellets, the hydrated chicken, the Newark pellets. Um, we'll add those in the hole as we

transplant, Hey, just a pinch of, of those or a combination of them. And then you're

guaranteed you're going to get nice green growth from your transplants.

If you put them in the hole too, you can afford to spend that extra money on that high

nitrogen, that richer compost if he's just on the surface, then it, you don't get quite the bang

for buck. I found it's most effective.

Diego: [00:29:35] For any of those crops that aren't tomatoes, do you find any advantage to

fertigation or is it a�does the cost benefit not pay off?

Ben Hartman: [00:29:45] With our compost system, I've not found a need to do fertigation

in the field. And sometimes we'll have main lines connected to the tomato house and we'll

have. Some fertigation run through the drip tape. Um, anyhow, but I found it not to be

needed in the field as long as we're using compost on this mulching plate, I call it a mulching

plate laying compost, like as if it were a mulch, just do weed smothering, and then we're

going to plant or direct seed or transplant directly into it.

Diego: [00:30:23] Know when you say crop out spinach, you're going to move the kale. Do

you completely remove all of the plant from the ground? Some people I know will just cut it

close as they can. And let's say the green harvest or leave the roots in their plant around it.

How do you approach that?

Ben Hartman: [00:30:43] That's one of the important processes, stuff need to figure out if

you're going to do this compact farming and this thing efficiently from one crop to the next.

And so the reason we're not a strictly no-till farm or a very low till farm, however, in the

summertime I've got, you know, a hundred, 200 feet of arugula, three foot wide bed, 200

feet of arugula looking at me.

I'm just going to grab a tiller and till shallowly on the surface, even a small, small BCS. I just,

just keep it close to the surface, get the roots, the roots up in the, of the air. And that's the

fastest way to transition from one crop to the next, in the summertime and the easiest to, in

terms of work now in the winter greenhouse, like I said, we're going to plant kale tomorrow

afternoon.

There's a lot of spinach. I've gotten 10 harvests off of a spinach patch in the south end of the

greenhouse. We're going to pull each of those guys out by hand. It's going to be tedious. Uh,

however, that's high value space this time of year in the greenhouse. And so it'll be worth it.

And my process, like you mentioned, would sometimes be to mow it, but I actually liked on

spinach to have it not mowed co you can have a handle to grab onto.

However, what we will do is slice underneath it and there are a couple of ways to do it. I

have the under cutter behind my Komodo tractor. And that's a root digger implement and

we'll use that to slice hourly underneath crops. I can�t get the tractor in now, there's too

much ice and snow, I won't be able to do that for tomorrow afternoon's project.

What we'll do is, you can use a wheel hoe. I get a wide blade, you know, 12-inch wide blade

or so on a wheel hoe to slice underneath your crops. I found that was a bit tedious,

especially with spinach has been in the ground as long as this stuff has. I planted it in early

August.

So where are we at? Here are six months. Yeah. About five, five months or so. Um, and so

that's, that's pretty well abolition by the wheel hoe would be pretty tedious to slice

underneath it. And so what are we going to do so well, what have found is that the most

ergonomic and it's still a pain, but most are now it would be to use a flat bladed shovel, like

a standard square, flat 10 or 12-inch wide shovel, and then I'll take an angle grinder to it to

make sure you've got a razor sharp edge.

And then we'll just use that shovel. And shovel underneath our crop that's in the ground, say

close to the surface, because we want to keep the soil in place if we can and just remove the

plant. But we found that the shovel is more ergonomic and this case was deeply rooted

crops have, and then we'll go in and we'll break. We'll get, certainly get what we can by

raking. Then what we can't rake up, we'll go through by hand and pull it and I'll take a couple

of us probably two or three hours tomorrow afternoon to get those beds cleared and

prepped, and then it'll be probably a one hour project to do the kale transplanting.

And this case, the bed prep is more work than the actual transplant day.

Diego: [00:34:04] Here's the question that comes up related to that. And I remember at

Rose Creek farms, you touched on this a little bit in the presentation you gave there. What

are your thoughts on going towards a low-tillage system with paper pot, say you had a

previous crop that had been transplanted into the ground with paper pots and either direct

seeding next to that crop, after the first crop is done, leaving the paper chains and all the

crop residue in the ground, or even running new paper chains in between the old paper

chain rows.

Ben Hartman: [00:34:41] And I would answer that by saying I've done all of the above and

those are all good options and it is all about conditions, local conditions.

So there's just not a one size fits all solution here. I was just at a conference out in Western

Colorado and the soil type they have, and they don't have a lot. They've had a drought for

several seasons and their paper pot chains were just not disintegrating for them. So the

frustration for those growers, whereas for me, my chains�I can lightly tilt them in and

they're gone, poof, within a month, month and a half.

You're in peak in during summertime when you have the heat build at the center very

quickly. So it depends on your conditions and ideally, what we like to do is actually pull it. If

the chain is still intact enough, we'll just pull the entire chain with radish harvest. For

instance, we got early radishes and paper chains. French breakfast in particular, we can do

this we'll just pull the chain and then you can harvest the French breakfast at a comfortable

waist-height, pull the chain, then you harvest after you pull it. And then just throw the whole

chain in your compost, and then your bed is clean for whatever goes in next.

Now let's say the chain is too broken down to do that. Then you get your radishes or turnips

harvested, and there's bits, the chain that are still left. Well, it's not a problem if we're doing

and transplanted peppers after that or cucumbers or something, or which is often the case

since we're going from spring crops, like a turnip to cucumbers. So we'll just leave the paper

in the ground and transplant, or if we're going to put plastic over say cucumbers, it's fine.

We'll just lay plastic right on the, on top of the, the residue. If we're going to direct feed

arugula or salad greens after then paper pot crop, then we're going to need to be more

meticulous to get out more of the chain. However, even then I'm not perfectionistic. We'll

take a rake, we'll get maybe 60 or 80% of the chain removed enough that it's not going to

gum up.

I use a Jang single row seeder, not that it's not going to gum up the seeder. And then we'll

just get our direct seed crop in and I'm fine with leaving bits of paper out. It doesn't look the

nicest. Um, however, by September, October there'll be disintegrated.

Diego: [00:37:20] Yeah. Layering this compost on your bed, I think a lot of people have

different visions of what compost can be, you know, from compost that has a bunch of horse

apples in it to stuff that's really fine. And friable. What's been your experience using the Jang

or yang seeder directly in the compost. Cause that's one concern I hear also come up with

people is can I seed directly in the compost if I'm on a low or no-tillage system with a seeder

like the Jang or the Yang?

Ben Hartman: [00:37:50] So if you're going to direct seed the compost, then the Yang is

definitely the seeder to use. The six-row seeder, that four-row pinpoint seeder, even the

earth-row seeder will have a tougher time with the sort of chunkiness and unevenness that

can be often found in a no-till compost system.

And so it's a matter of experience to know what kind of till you need. However, that's one

reason we're not a strictly no-till farm, and we do keep a small DCS, seven, 10, the smallest

size DCS they make with a little 18-inch tiller behind it. And then if we need a bit more till for

our seeder or paper pot transplanter, we'll just grab, put it in second. I never till them first.

I'm always, I'm never patient enough to put it in second.

Just go real quick, around the surface. I keep a low throttle and then your times aren't, you

know, you don't have over-rotation of the times. Just a quick path where you just left the

top couple of inches.

I tilt their works, self-tilter tool where your screw gun would be the power source, so tilter

would do the same thing. We're using our VCs as a tilter in that sense, but it's heavier duty.

So we get more done than with, with less amount of labor than the tilter.

Diego: [00:39:16] Yeah. So some good suggestions there. One other thing that came up as a

result of last episode was compost. You use a lot of compost, and your farm now is what's

your total acreage under production that you have right now?

Ben Hartman: [00:39:29] It's about three quarters. We have a we're less than one acre.

Diego: [00:39:32] Okay. So less than one acre, three quarters of an acre. People hear a lot of

composts going onto the ground. Now that the farm has been set up, fields are established

beds are established. How much do you think you're investing annually in compost to

maintain three quarters of an acre of high intensity veg?

Ben Hartman: [00:39:51] Okay. So I'm not totally set up. Last year, I took basically the year

off to focus on building our burn house and the city of Goshen really put me under the gun. I

pulled my permits in October of 2017 and those permits cost me like 1,500 or something.

And we're, we're approaching October of 2018. And the city said, you've got to finish your

project up here, or you're going to have to take out another round of permits, fill out more

papers and go through that whole process again.

And so I really just focused and hammered hard on the house because I didn't want us to

pay for those permits again. And we didn't get the farm completely set up as I maybe would

have wanted from the land point view. Now our infrastructure is good. It's probably good to

have that pressure room, propagation room, and the processing room, the spray station

were all set out for the city, kind of made me meet the deadline on that.

Anyhow. So, what I'm still doing is adding compost and we have probably half or more

where we've got that three or so inches of compost on the surface. And then this winter, in

fact, just this morning, I called to get another round of compost delivered here.

And what I do is when it gets on the property when it's warm, and then when the ground

freezes is the best time to apply it, because then you don't have soil compaction. And so I've

got, 50 yards of compost coming. I've already put 50 yards on, got another 50 yards coming.

And when the ground, we got a warm week here, so they can, you know, trucks and deliver

it.

And then when the ground freezes, I'll get the skid loader and we will go out and dump

compost and I'll spread it with the bucket. And maybe someone will go along behind with

the rake and halfway level it, just spread it on the surface. We're covering a blanket on the

entire growing service here. So on an initial application, we're going to put about 150 yards

total compost for the initial application.

And then what we had needed at the previous farm was another 50 yards on an annual basis

and that's an manageable amount one can make on one zone. To get 150 yards, that would

be a lot of compost for one person to make, so we're buying a lot of that in.

It's the same stuff, same leaves that the city delivers to us and that we're making our own

compost out of it. But the city has their own composting facility. And so we're paying them

to make that amount of compost, it cost $8 a yard, which is cheap. But we're fortunate to be

able to have that low-cost carbon that we can use on our farm.

And it's not potting mix level compost, I want to stress. This is one important thing to do

when you're starting a farm is be a sleuth like Sherlock Holmes and find low-cost carbon

sources close to you, and then don't be too perfectionistic.

And so with our compost, for instance, I told them we don't. I don't want, their grade-A

compost and most cobbles players will have sifting equipment. And so they'll run it through

a large industrial sifting equipment, which has half the work. So I said, what would you

charge? And they charge, you know, around $20 a yard, if it has to go through that sifting

equipment. And I said, what if you skipped the sifting equipment? And what if I said, you

could deliver me stuff? That's, you know, got some chunks in it. Maybe 80% compost and so

a B or C grade mix. And so we negotiated with them and got down to got down to $8 a yard.

Diego: [00:43:55] Yeah, no, that's a great way to save. And, you know, you make up for any

potential non -omposted material or lack of fertility by adding fertility on your end, on the

back end. And it just reminds me of something I heard JM Fortier say once, and these aren't

the exact numbers, but it was something like. I can make $1,500 a bed in crops.

I can afford to spend a hundred dollars a bed in amendments and compost to make that

$1,500. Like the investment pays off. People may think it sounds like a lot, but in the long

run, you're going to get more than your money's worth back at the end of the day.

Ben Hartman: [00:44:33] It will pay off, it will pay off eventually.

And even if we're paying twice as much, it would be paying off. I don't tell that to people

making the compost, but, yeah, I would agree with him on that. It's a worthwhile investment

because the reason I have a preference for it, as opposed to minerals and even fish

emulsions and such is that it's the slow release. They say that a compost would release

minerals nine years if measured nine years after compost application. It�s still getting

nutrients from that initial application. So it's a long-term investment. You have to prorate it

in your mind. I don't think of it as you need to get it paid, you know, paid for and for one

growing season, but definitely after three, four growing seasons, and you realize how

mellow your soil is in quality. They perhaps in a higher yield, and less work because you

don't have the same amount of weed pressure. Yeah, it pays off.

Diego: [00:45:34] We covered a lot in this one from maintaining bed fertility, between crops

through tomatoes, and maybe we'll take tomatoes on more in a future episode. But in the

meantime, if people want to learn more about your tomato growing system, how you do it,

how you make compost, you offer that all as one package at the Lean Farm School.

If people want to learn more about tomatoes, what do you have to offer within lean farm

school? When it comes to say tomatoes?

Ben Hartman: [00:46:02] Sure. I've got a whole, section, called my Tomato Masterclass and

that's masterclass. We filmed our entire tomato production process from seed to harvest

and even, you know, going on a delivery.

I, you can see exactly how we grow and package and market our whole program on

tomatoes. And you really do need to master tomatoes probably if you're going to be in this

business and it's the number one selling vegetable and you ask this consistent high demand

and in particularly local tomatoes, people want their local tomatoes and they want it for a

long growing season.

So if you can master your tomatoes and if that's the only crop you can produce, you're off to

a good start on your farm. And there are, there are a couple of free preview lessons in there

too. And so, yeah, I go in there and, click or clear around watch the free lessons in there.

So let's see, I'm really excited about the course over the winter, Rachel and I put some

finishing touches on the course and I feel really good about the content in there in that it's

stuff. I wish I had access to when I was starting my farm. And what's unique is that it blends.

It's a blended combination of lean thinking and lean management system.

With small scale market growing. So that makes the course unique. It's not just how to grow

tomatoes, how to deal with lean mindset and to use principles of mood elimination, hygiene,

Kaizen, and some of these, you know, lean pieces top of cutting edge production. And it's

very powerful lean system is most powerful production system that there is.

And we feel good and confident about where we're at as a farm. And so we feel like we've

got, I feel good about the content in terms of the production of our vegetables too. And so

I'm excited about the course. We've got students all over the world taking it, and it's been a

surprise to me that so many students from not from the US and Canada.

I have been interested in using this course. And the other thing I wanted, last thing I'll say

about it is I, that it's unique in that we're a micro farm doing us a lesson when it, with a very

slim cast of characters here, it's my wife, Rachel, and me, and then we'll have a couple of

helpers during the growing season and making a living at it.

And so if you're looking to grow on 200 acres, this is not in the course for you to go.

However, if you're looking at this stuff with a minimal capital investment and want to

actually see results on a small acreage, then this of course is the right place.

Diego: [00:48:53] There are a lot of great content in there.

You're a great teacher or somebody who people I think can learn a lot from, for people that

want to learn more, check out the link below to this one or visit the lean farm school. Dot

com to learn more from Ben and everything that they're doing at clay bottom farm. There,

you have it. Farmer Ben Hartman of Clay Bottom farm.

If you want to learn more about how Ben builds soil, how he grows tomato, check out his

online resources in his online course at theleanfarmschool.com. I've also linked to his course

in the show notes for this one. So be sure to check it out. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure

to give Ben a shout out on Instagram at Clay Bottom Farm.

I hope you enjoyed this one next week. I'll be back with another episode until then be nice.

Be thankful and do the work.