Southern Ontario Holistic Orchard Presentation

[MikeH]

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Michael Phillips will present a full-day program, sponsored by Ecological Farmers of Ontario. Michael is an expert organic orchardist from Vermont, who will offer his skills, knowledge and tips on fruit production.

THE FULL DAY MICHAEL PHILLIPS SEMINAR PROMISES TO BE ONE OF THE BEST OVERALL PRESENTATIONS EVER OFFERED AT THE GUELPH CONFERENCE.

Note that EFO members (and students with valid student I.D. CARD) will receive the discounted $40 CDN + HST rate for the full-day program. If you are not yet a proud member of the Ecological Farmers Of Ontario, please consider joining before mid-January, to get the $40 rate. The rate for all others is $65 + HST - See: efao.ca - Note that EFO, with roots going back to the 1979 era in Ontario, is one of the Official Sponsors of the Guelph Organic Conference. As such, while you are at the Feb. 2-3 Organic Expo in the Guelph University Centre, you can meet EFO staff in the middle of the Main Level Expo ‘power alley’ and purchase all of their courses, tours, books and other materials. Get involved – join EFO !

Edit: Add date

Attachments:

[richardw]

Are you hoping to get there Mike,would be so interesting

[MikeH]

Yep. Joyce and I are both going. It should be very interesting and definitely fits the direction that we want for our orchard. We joined Ecological Farmers of Ontario with a family membership that cost $45 to get the discount benefit of $40. That's turning out to be a very good deal also since EFO AGM is coming up in a weeks time and the keynote speaker is Ralph Martin, founder of the Organic Agriculture Center of Canada, and current Sustainability Chair at the University of Guelph, who will be talking about "adapting agricultural production to a new unknown normal"! It'll be via webinar so we can see it without travel costs.

[canadamike]

Hello Mike and Joyce...

So...how was it? Please tell us more.

[MikeH]

Will do - at the end of January.

[bunkie]

Nov 15, 2012 18:12:11 GMT -5 MikeH said:

...who will be talking about "adapting agricultural production to a new unknown normal"! ....

sounds fascinating mike!

[MikeH]

This workshop will also be offered in Picton on Saturday February 2nd.

Not much more in the way of details yet.

[raymondo]

I bought his book. Looks interesting. It will be some time before I read it. My bedside table is currently full to overflowing!

[ottawagardener]

Sounds fun indeed.

[raymondo]

Started reading his book. He says wood chip is good but only if it's what he calls ramial wood chip (branches and leaves of deciduous trees and shrubs I think). I don't have access to such chips. Does that mean I can't use what chips I do have access to? To date I've used whatever I can get. This means my mulch is quite diverse - wood chips from the town's recycling depot, straw, grass clippings, leaves, manures of various sorts, my own garden prunings and of course compost. I'm hoping this diversity of mulches would counterbalance the lack of ramial woodchips. Thoughts?

[MikeH]

Chipped Branch Wood

[T]he chipped branch wood that is used as a soil amendment is not like wood in general. Coming as it does from twigs and young branches, it contains a much higher proportion of living tissue, and hence of proteins and other nitrogen containing compounds, than do thicker branches and tree trunks.

REGENERATING SOILS WITH RAMIAL CHIPPED WOOD

The C/N ratio for ramial wood ranges from 30/1 to 170/1 while for stemwood the C/N ratio ranges from 400/1 to 750/1. Branches under 7 cm in diameter, without their leaves, are the best choice for shredding. In the North-American species, essential plant nutrients (N, P, K, Ca, Mg) increase when branch diameter decreases. These concentrations reach a minimum in branches over 7 cm in diameter, so branches having less than 7 cm in diameter contain 75% fertilizing nutrients.

The bigger the branches the less digestible they become. If sawdust, issued from tree trunks, is mixed with the soil, nitrogen will starve unless the sawdust is composted with farm manure. The trunk of the tree supports the branches which are the real biological center for wood production. The trunk is «dead» and does not allow lignin to be used by enzymes from microflora and fauna to integrate into the soil. For the forest, the «dead» trunk is «garbage», attacked from the outside, and transformed in CO2 with very little benefit to the soil.