Spring Seeding for 2024 got off to a great start on Fall Line Capital’s Canyon Farm in Northern Oregon. At the end of March potato seeding started on Canyon Farm with conditions being close to ideal as you can see from these photos taken at that time, seeding conditions remained great for the following weeks as well. Rare timely rains in the third week of March made for great conditions for planting. The latest equipment in potato planting systems being used by Fall Line’s tenants placed each cut seed potato perfectly in the ground with the cut face pointed downwards. Joel Edmonds – Regional Farm Manager for the Pacific Northwest Region for Fall Line Capital – is seen pointing to the freshly planted potatoes showing the desired depth of about 8 inches and the cut face facing down with all the “eyes” facing upwards. This allows the new potato plant to get off to a quick start and makes sure that fresh tubers are produced at that depth in the soil away from the harmful rays of the sun, while still allowing the plant to easily grow to the soil surface and flourish.
The deep and fertile, yet porous soils of Canyon Farm, facilitate excellent potato production along with many other crops. The harvest from these fields in the fall will likely end up as fries at one of your favorite restaurants. You can also see a recently desiccated cover crop where the plants have all turned a tan color, and the outside edge of the field remains green. A winter cereal was planted on that field last fall and that kept the topsoil and nutrients in place over the winter. This is especially important in this region along the Columbia River where there is usually low snowfall and strong winds in the winter. This cover crop was sprayed out in mid March and will be seeded directly in April to corn or maybe other vegetables.
You can see that the “green” photo shows a fantastic stand of alfalfa on the North side of Canyon Farm, soaking up the spring sun and growing quickly, this will be cut for feed (hopefully 4 or more times this year) to be used by local livestock operations. The fenced in enclosure is an area where FLC is introducing specific native plants to the wild areas outside the cultivated fields on FLF Canyon. You will also see Joel standing with freshly delivered bags of biochar to be applied to fields in conjunction with compost this spring on another of FLC’s Oregon based farms not far from Canyon Farm. Hopefully spring seeding is going well for everyone this year.
