Winter Production at Slack Hollow Farm

While at the NOFA NY Winter Conference, I attended an offsite session one winter high tunnel production held at Slack Hollow Farm in Argyle, NY. Slack Hollow Farm is a family run diversified vegetable farm, in business since 1985. Seth Jacobs, Martha Johnson and crew grow and market NOFA-NY Certified organic produce grown in the fertile upland hills of Washington County.
http://www.slackhollowfarm.com/

Winter production: Slack Hollow Farm markets their produce year round. Through the use of two minimally heated hoop-houses that they recently added, they are able to offer a diversity of greens at several winter markets, including the Troy Farmers' Market, Saratoga Farmers' Market, Honest Weight Food Co-op, Gardenworks, and the Greenwich Local Market.

They grow arugula, baby spinach, basil, beans, beets, butternut squash, carrots, chard, cilantro, cucumbers, dill, fennel. Lettuce, kale, mesclun, mint, new potatoes, onions, oregano, parsley, purplette onions, scallions, shiitake mushrooms, and tomatoes. They also produce honey and granola.

Their high tunnels are Rimol Nor' Easters with buried radiant heat produced by oil furnaces. They try to strike a balance between the cost to provide this heat and keeping the soil just warm enough to allow plant growth. Beds are covered by three layers of row cover, suspended 1.5 ft above the crops by large horizontal EMT pipes, that is rolled up during the day to allow the crops to absorb sunlight and replaced in the evening for protection.

As a rule, Seth said they plant into 'stale' beds by leaving them fallow for  acouple weeks, and flame weeding before planting.

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Seth is a big fan of the Four-Row Pinpoint Seeder. They own two of them, marked A & B, and they never adjust the seed hole size.

There are many other interesting things to see in the following gallery.

Thanks!

Adam.

Adam Lemieux
Tools & Supplies Manager