A question from a fellow Grower of Wheatgrass
"I'm a small scale market farmer. I drink, grow and sell wheatgrass
juice and grass locally. I recently went through the USDA Organic certification process and during that process I had to change from using Organic Gardener potting soil to Black Gold potting soil and now my wheatgrass is bitter. I grow in a small hoop house using natural light, and have only used our sweet well water to irrigate, (no other fertilizers).
Do you have any suggestions as to what my problem might be?"
Well, it sounds like the bitterness may be coming from the new soil, since that is the only thing you recently changed. I would try a different kind of soil. You don't have to use Black Gold potting soil to be in compliance with certified Organic standards. A new grower has to start somewhere by buying in soil. Here in Vermont we started with soil that had been dug out from the bottom of a drained pond. It was remarkably stone free and stockpiled for three years to let it dry out and develop beneficial bacterial life. Currently ( January 2009) we have twenty eight 4'x4'x4' compost boxes where the root stubble from the harvested trays is piled up. There are red wiggler earth worms in the soil that break down and digest the roots and green organic matter left on the soil surface. After 2 months it is all broken down and ready to use to fill growing trays. Every summer 25% of the soil bank volume is composted outdoors to expose the soil to sun and alternate freezing and thawing. The four crops we grow - sunflower, radish, and pea greens, and wheatgrass really like growing in this soil when it first comes back inside to be mixed with the the rest of the soil. .
For more soil info, check out a section found at our website.
juice and grass locally. I recently went through the USDA Organic certification process and during that process I had to change from using Organic Gardener potting soil to Black Gold potting soil and now my wheatgrass is bitter. I grow in a small hoop house using natural light, and have only used our sweet well water to irrigate, (no other fertilizers).
Do you have any suggestions as to what my problem might be?"
Well, it sounds like the bitterness may be coming from the new soil, since that is the only thing you recently changed. I would try a different kind of soil. You don't have to use Black Gold potting soil to be in compliance with certified Organic standards. A new grower has to start somewhere by buying in soil. Here in Vermont we started with soil that had been dug out from the bottom of a drained pond. It was remarkably stone free and stockpiled for three years to let it dry out and develop beneficial bacterial life. Currently ( January 2009) we have twenty eight 4'x4'x4' compost boxes where the root stubble from the harvested trays is piled up. There are red wiggler earth worms in the soil that break down and digest the roots and green organic matter left on the soil surface. After 2 months it is all broken down and ready to use to fill growing trays. Every summer 25% of the soil bank volume is composted outdoors to expose the soil to sun and alternate freezing and thawing. The four crops we grow - sunflower, radish, and pea greens, and wheatgrass really like growing in this soil when it first comes back inside to be mixed with the the rest of the soil. .
For more soil info, check out a section found at our website.
posted by Pat @ 4/16/2006 09:32:00 AM
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