Grazier's Garden is a partner business at Deck Family Farm where we grow fruit and vegetables to sell through the Full Farm CSA. You can find us at the top of the hill behind the brooder barns and near the "maternity" field if you're ever out for a visit.
©2024 Deck family Farm. Images of Grazier's Garden at Deck Family Farm.
While Deck Family Farm has been certified organic by Oregon Tilth for 15 years, Grazier’s Garden has not taken the arduous step of being separately certified. We stick within the definition of organic gardening practices, but have decided that the costs and benefits in gaining certification do not work out for us at this time.
In creating productive soil, we use organic compost and amendments approved for organic use. We will occasionally use natural and biodegradable neem oil for pest control, but we mostly rely on attracting natural predators, exclusion (such as row covers and ground covers), crop rotation and companion planting as a way to live with and among the pests without applying pesticides.
Tilling is another important garden technique that we can use for pest control. This practice qualifies as "organic" as it does not add non-organic amendments, however it is disruptive to the health of the soil microbiome.
When we till, we do it only once per season in order to combat garden symphylans. Symphylans are a soil-dwelling arthropod that eats the tiny hairlike roots of plants, making it harder for the plants to take in water and nutrients. As you can imagine, this can severely stunt or kill the plants.
Tilling works because symphylans cannot move through soil and must rely on existing tunnels formed by other soil dwellers. Tilling breaks up these tunnels and crushes the symphylans themselves. Unfortunately for us, ideal soils for symphylans are those with good soil structure and high organic matter content—the same soil characteristics most growers strive for in their fields.
We struggle with them more in some seasons than others. You may have noticed we had less of certain crops this spring which was because we had near-complete losses of kales, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages and eggplant due to symphylans. Luckily, because we have so many other excellent garden businesses in the area, we are able to purchase those products from others and list them in the CSA.
We would love to be able to set consumer's minds at ease by maintaining an organic certification at Grazier's Garden, but it isn't that easy. Organic certification is a big deal! It takes years, costs up to $5,000 annually and is a time commitment of around 40 hours while hosting the inspection. The inspections are expensive, time consuming, and very, very thorough.
But it is also true that we do everything in Grazier's Garden in the same way we do on the rest of the farm because of our commitment to being an excellent steward of the land. We have a long track record at Deck for consistently and diligently improving our organic and regenerative practices, despite the lack of organic certification in Grazier's Garden.
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