Thanks for addressing the paper pot chain issue Richard (ie: acetone/ possible "fungicide"). I wondered about that, especially after you'd mentioned NOT wanting to use it in a previous vid. It's great that you consistently demonstrate a level of integrity and accountability in what you do. A rare thing these days and much appreciated.
You should try some hydroponic growing using biodigested manure effluent. The simplicity of planting/transplanting/crop turn around time worked real well at my old farm site for reducing labour compared with soil beds
Sounds all good and sounds like you've got plenty to think about through the winter. I've gotten to think up some questions too: This paper pot transplanter looks like a real timesaver, made for farms who have big beds and big acreage. Would you really need it on a intensive, tight spacing microfarm, where you aim at 30- 40 euro's sales per m2 and then with a 1000 m2 as a maximum to work on? When you make Your calculation on higer and lower profitable vegetables do you then also take in account the hours worked on the produce or do you look solely at the marketprice per kilo and the amount harvested per square meter? Is there a big difference in labourintensity when growing veggies? Why not just look at which veggies thrive in your soil and focus most on these? If everybody would start growing high value-crops these crops would go down in price because the markets would be full of them.
THANK YOU! I am 59 & retired, I am growing all my food, well alot of it & the paperpot is an esay way to plant with out bending over or getting on my knees. Getting down & working is not a problem, it is getting up again & again. So the cost is second to the easy of planting many bed in a short time. I am going to be as organic certified as I can be, because I am an organic gardener, so why not. It maybe that not all of my vegetables are CO. The layers, pork & steers will be organic pasture feed, so I had hoped to make all my vegetable OC also. Now I need to hire someone to plant or forgo the OC on some of my vegetables.
I'm a little concerned by the 'only grow what's profitable' approach: many times at fresh markets I've bypassed the possibly cheaper stall because they are only selling a narrow range of things. They may be cheaper, I don't check, but I feel more inspired by the stall that has things like tomatoes and a few obscure-but-interesting vegetables. Ditto in supermarkets: if they are out of stock of the organic cream I want, I'll just leave and go to the other supermarket for my whole shop. Sometimes the lower-profit items are useful lures.
he also said he will see how it works out. he's always tweaking his systems and you can't fault him for leaning up his operation. with rico, it will probably work. it's more targeted than the farmers market. if he loses a few customers that get hurt that he wants balance in his work and personal life then he may have to adjust again, but i doubt it. he's a genius. he is more knowledgeable than almost anybody else about this permaculture subject, but his humble tone and willingness to always try new and improved approaches shows me that he is always learning, growing personally, and trying to make a difference in the world. instead of always asking people for a handout, which is what so many others in this youtube space seem to do. he is showing up and coming young farmers how to do things profitably, but with a conscience. conscious capitalism anyone? his vision is to show that you can restore the land and soil while making a profit, maybe even more profit! keep it up richard! he is one of the few voices out here that are proving that permaculture is not just a nice theory, but that it's a more sustainable and profitable way to farm. a real model farm.
yeah your thinking more about a farmers market model. in that case, you're absolutely right about variety bringing people to the table but its kinda hard to know where to draw the line. you need variety to attract people but, given to limited space and time/labor, you need to prioritize what's worthwhile to grow and whats not. seems like ridgedale is just refining their model and working doing the best they can do in their market at their SCALE. small ag learning from big ag once again. i do see how you can make the "slippery slope" argument that this moves them more towards conventional ag, but the stuff is organic, healthy, and local, so I'd say fair enough.
I do understand that REKO isn't quite the same as a farmer's market, but I find my response is much the same when buying in our local REKO equivalent. That may say more about me than the market, of course. I just think 'refining' is a dangerous attraction, to be watched squint-eyed.
I also think that this is a wrong approach. Not only because there is limited interest for "high value" crops such as radishes and turnips here in Sweden, but because this approach is very labour intensive. Doesn't make much sense to me, if you are trying to lower your labour input as you say Richard. They are actually not that profitable in my opinion, despite what Curtis Stone says, when you take into account that they are labour intensive and perishable and the uncertainty of growing less popular crops. We are going in the opposite direction, starting a little CSA on the side (30 shares) as a complement to restaurants and REKO.
Acetone is the safest organic solvent there is. Safer than ethyl alcohol which we drink by the ounce/grams. It is produced in many biological processes including in my liver. Since it is produced organically, it is readily removed by our systems, again I cite my liver. This is not one to worry about.
Of course not, because drain bramage. I wouldn't go in for a glass of good ol' all natural strychnine either. I am saying second hand paper pots are less dangerous than second hand beer.
Now if you could merge thinner paper amounts whilst using seaweed it would be a win win all round. I guess the balance is then strength over crop germination as seaweed will decompose over a far shorter period. I'm interested to see if the paper does hold up or snaps on occasions. I'm sure it's a great tool, I don't doubt that for a minute seeing Curtis use it but the chains are still their after harvest (although Curtis has some crops out the ground in < 30 days) so how they get durability and shorten decomposition time I guess is the golden ticket for the chains. Lots of work is being done with seaweed so it wouldn't surprise me if they try that route in the future. I would be glad if I could find the surface area to use a paperpot transplanter in the first place though! :) Nice video Richard, thanks.
Hey, In other videos you have mentioned that the paper pot chains are antifungal and separately that your paper pot provider in japan is bringing out a range of bio-degradable hemp paper pots that biodegrade much quicker? do you remove your paper pots after you've used them or leave them in? could you please comment on these points? Would be greatly appreciated! I'm very inspired by your channel. Best wishes.
Curtis did a video with a guy showing a technique to remove the paper chains post transplant, because the guy loved them so much that he used them for almost all his market garden. I agree that if there are traces of acetone in the glue they will be removed when you remove the persistent paper chains later in the season..
I have cucumber, French beans, cauliflower and garlic on my high value list because I can either get a high price for them (beans, cauliflower and garlic), or they require almost no effort once once the initial labor investment is in (cucumber and garlic). On the other hand, rocket, spinach, kale and coriander (cilantro) are on my low value list because they either have limited demand (kale and rocket), bolt quickly in our climate (rocket and coriander) or don't command a decent price in our area (rocket, spinach and kale). Otherwise, my lists are similar. I still grow cabbage and broccoli, but only because the local climate makes them very productive. If our summers were hot I would avoid them.
Thank you Richard for your videos, Ill buy your paperpot next year when we buy a homestead. we are going to buy all our tools from your. Ill also going to buy your on line training. You do such a great job to inform and help others around the world. I see all your videos and I learn a lot from you. A very good weekend to you and your family. With kind regards Torben Gram, DK
Please share what you do to produce crops for your family, which will not be for sale to the public. How much actual garden space per family member? What do you grow specifically in your area for family consumption? How much time is (or will be) devoted to family food production? And what is the cost (labor, materials, etc.) to grow food for your own consumption? I always enjoy your videos, and best of luck with next year's spring/summer/fall crops.
I am really enjoying seeing the lasting influences of Maude Hélène, JM, and Curtis in this video, as I have seen your influence in Curtis' videos. Sadly, I've seen nothing from JM or Maude Hélène, so I can't say much about that. It has given me so much pleasure seeing you all interact this past year because you are all my current role models. Happy Holidays and an Abundant New Year
I appreciate all this information. I got the paperpot 2 years ago and it has been so great. I am really interested in cutting hours, as my wife and I are going from a 50 member C.S.A. this year to a 100 next year. I was wondering if you could keep a few beds under a trial. I did trial beds with compost and days to harvest on spinach, as well as direct seeding v. Paperpot. I was wondering if there was more I could do in the trial like number of harvest before a crop out. Wether a crop out was worth it later in the year, if there was enough time to plant something like raab, or Asian greens. Time is the most important factor in a small farm, but how can that time be scheduled for your climate and season needs to be established I think, and this can be done with different mixes of compost and like you said, planting what in which bed.
Richard, I think you will find it hard to remove the paper chains from the bed. They start decomposing and you would have to look through and pick bits out which would be very time consuming.
My opinion coming from someone who isn't doing the work would be to convert or make one garden at the 14meter length so you can get proper data on its speed and value relative to you
I remember you don't like the fact that you would need to keep importing paper chains from Japan if you use the system. Shipping fee is not an issue now that you've got your tool company, so how about this dependence on imported goods? Though it seems like a minor issue.
I was watching a video a while back (J.M. fortier I think) and the isue at that time was that the glue and the paper didn't work with the organic certification. I don't know if it has changed or if that's an isue for you.
With your climate I think you should push the transplants out as late as possible. Keep them in the cover as long as you can get away with and still have the paperpot function. The more controlled time the better for successful transplants
Hi Richard, can you tell me the minimum space i will need at the end of my beds to be able to line the planter up at the start and run it out at the end?
If you scale down your beds in production maybe you could work in soil building crops, reduce your dependency on off site compost, and spend less time spreading compost.
If you use cardboard for weed suppression and it gets digested by worms, how different is that from the paperpot usage? I assume the use of cardboard is approved for organic certification? It would be good to make them rather than import them.
If I understood the video correctly, the main difference between standard cardboard and the paper chains are the chemicals in the glue that holds the cells together. Not sure if I understand that last bit though. Are you suggesting that Ridgedale manufacture their own cardboard? If so, that seems highly impractical.
I think making set orders (as i understood it) would be anthithesis to what makes Reko work. I as a customer specifically want custom orders, else its just a vegbox. Am i missing something here?
It comes down to farmers offering what they want to sell. That obviously involves many factors, possibly including dialogue with customers, but it may not. I'm more interested in how 1 person can run a viable income from a 'normal' week when vegetable gardening at the moment
Sorry how will you remove acetone from paper pod once you have already planted it in your market garden. Will it not decompose or become part of your soil? I guess once you experiment then you will know it is not possible to remove the glue. it is a great product and i think it can be used. may be it needs some more modification and something reusable rather than buying paper pods. i know it will save manual labour massively hence offset the cost very easily but it should be reusable pods. great video as always
If I may, 75 cm beds is pretty standard for market gardening because it allows stepping across or straddling. Also, nowadays a lot of the tools used are designed around this width. Not sure what Richard uses for space between beds but 30 cm is about max and less if you feel you can work with it.
I disagree on culling "low value" vegetables for the sake of profit. For starters, consumers want convenience. They don't want to procure their vegetables from 5+ different suppliers. How scalable is regenerative agriculture if everyone just sells micro greens and salad mix? Surely mechanics of demand and supply are applicable irrespective how how a crop is grown. Is it about making money with market gardens or making a difference for a better tomorrow?
Hi Richard, i was about To buy the paperpot from terrateck as it was the easier to find in europe. Why did you choose to sell the japanese one? Other question: will you sell the 5 row jang seeder that paperpot.co sells? Thks!
by the way, also check out the japanese Mukai seeder www.mukai-kogyo.co.jp/hands which is possibly one of the best in terms of price-quality (use google translate to browse their website). The seeder is available on alibaba.
Japanese one is better; lighter and in use for much longer. We don't have the 5 row seeder, Curtis worked with Jang to make custom shoes. I prefer the 6 row, which gives 6 or 12 rows to a 75cm bed. More versatile in that way. I may use the Jang, but can't see my own need really...
I would ask paperpot transplant user, about extending beds. Im thinking thats where alot of time is saved, the longer the row the better. Maybe remover sawdust from half and you will know very soon. Glad luck.
I would love to start a reko group here in the states but the brochure is in Finnish! I'm curious how you could bring this model here. You could start your own group sure, but having a brand and a model seems like the way to go. I'm in a very saturated market so doing sales online seems like a good fit here. Also curious how the software system works. do you buy it from reko? how much support do you get from that side? or are you using your own ordering software you bought previous to starting with a reko group?
It's no special software, Facebook is the platform used. It is just a group on FB where producers announce the things they sell, and consumers make their orders as a comment to the post. There will also be a corresponding group for producers only, to discuss matters concerning only them. A administrator looks after the groups to make sure things runs smoothly and according to the rules set. A set place, day and time is decided for the deliverance, all meet up and goods and money are exchanged. The day after, the admin deletes all former posts and producers are free to make new ones.
@@finchj9b that sounds great but how do you plan your production for the season? could see that being quite the challenge. seems like most people who do reko must have had a reasonable customer base beforehand to at least get some sense of what the demand would be. i could see this working well in conjunction with other sales outlets like traditional farmers markets and maybe restaurant sales to supplement. i got the growing part to some extent but figuring out how to balance production to not overproduce has been quite the challenge.
In regards to the paperpot transplanter, we are very frustrated in Canada. If we use it we cannot be Certified Organic. However, we import produce for the US that is 'Certified Organic' and they are allowed to use the paperpot transplanter. This is completely unfair in consideration of time, energy & cost required to transplant. How can we compete with that!
I market garden and can see the logic in just growing whats profitable which in the Curtis Stone model is basically salad and baby root veg. By looking at Richards list this seems to be what he is going for. But I think Like everything it needs to be balance, prioritize and have the highly profitable stuff as your bread and butter, but you need to still do stuff you enjoy growing and attracts people, which will be different for everyone. I think if everyone jumps on the Curtis Stone model of just salad and highly specialized, it wont be long before these crops and model become far less profitable. I can feel for Richard, I think he is burnt out and needing a well deserved break!
Of course using a paperpot transplanter saves a lot of time, using a tractor is even better if you think the same way. The spacing of the paperpot chains is about the same of using and tractor with hoes but I can't expand my plot. The lost space is about 50% on many crops. Since I cannot use anymore fabrics to keep weeds low and that I have to lose space and cannot interplant and do real intensive market gardening then I think the paperpot is an hybrid gadget. The time you save transplanting is actually the time you'll lose unweeding because you can't use fabrics and the low density means more weeds ! I forget to mention that you'll have to keep buying paperpot chains. is this durable agriculture, losing cultivating space to use this machine and spending my time unweeding and keeping buying pot chains ?
You may have a look to Connor Crickmore's Never sink Farm. He runs a small farm, uses no landscape fabrics and a lot of paperpot transplanting. And he develops methods to use paperpot in space where the transplanteter doesn't work.
Like Perma Pen UK - my concern if I was you would be the reduction in your offerings. Many years ago I was in grocery retail. Our fresh veg was under performing and we cut out the products that were not selling fast enough so causing waste. The profit on the veg did increase but our overall shop sales fell. Also you will lose the connection to some degree by dropping the CSA. Telling your loyal supporting customers you no longer want them. They're bound to feel rejected. Yes profit is important but think it through a bit - you're the proponent of holistic management and this seems to be taking things in isolation that could have unexpected results.
Fresh Direct, an online food delivery service, has a farm to table program but they still take a decent amount of the profit. It might still be worth it because of the ease of having a truck come to you and them doing the sales through their platform, but and you lose that direct sales advantage and opportunity to interact with customers. This also seems like a model for more established and probably larger scale enterprises than a market garden. unfortunately, this is the direction i see the organic local food scene going rather than the reko model...
Richard - I'm in the process of starting a tree nursery component to my farm...any chance you will have a tree nursery video in the future?
Thanks for addressing the paper pot chain issue Richard (ie: acetone/ possible "fungicide"). I wondered about that, especially after you'd mentioned NOT wanting to use it in a previous vid. It's great that you consistently demonstrate a level of integrity and accountability in what you do. A rare thing these days and much appreciated.
As a wholesaler for Europe, I would think you have a little bit of influence on the manufacturer of paper pot chains.
You should try some hydroponic growing using biodigested manure effluent. The simplicity of planting/transplanting/crop turn around time worked real well at my old farm site for reducing labour compared with soil beds
Sounds all good and sounds like you've got plenty to think about through the winter. I've gotten to think up some questions too: This paper pot transplanter looks like a real timesaver, made for farms who have big beds and big acreage. Would you really need it on a intensive, tight spacing microfarm, where you aim at 30- 40 euro's sales per m2 and then with a 1000 m2 as a maximum to work on? When you make Your calculation on higer and lower profitable vegetables do you then also take in account the hours worked on the produce or do you look solely at the marketprice per kilo and the amount harvested per square meter? Is there a big difference in labourintensity when growing veggies? Why not just look at which veggies thrive in your soil and focus most on these? If everybody would start growing high value-crops these crops would go down in price because the markets would be full of them.
THANK YOU! I am 59 & retired, I am growing all my food, well alot of it & the paperpot is an esay way to plant with out bending over or getting on my knees. Getting down & working is not a problem, it is getting up again & again. So the cost is second to the easy of planting many bed in a short time.
I am going to be as organic certified as I can be, because I am an organic gardener, so why not. It maybe that not all of my vegetables are CO.
The layers, pork & steers will be organic pasture feed, so I had hoped to make all my vegetable OC also. Now I need to hire someone to plant or forgo the OC on some of my vegetables.
I'm a little concerned by the 'only grow what's profitable' approach: many times at fresh markets I've bypassed the possibly cheaper stall because they are only selling a narrow range of things. They may be cheaper, I don't check, but I feel more inspired by the stall that has things like tomatoes and a few obscure-but-interesting vegetables. Ditto in supermarkets: if they are out of stock of the organic cream I want, I'll just leave and go to the other supermarket for my whole shop. Sometimes the lower-profit items are useful lures.
He pointed out that he's focusing on 'rico'? marketing.
he also said he will see how it works out. he's always tweaking his systems and you can't fault him for leaning up his operation. with rico, it will probably work. it's more targeted than the farmers market. if he loses a few customers that get hurt that he wants balance in his work and personal life then he may have to adjust again, but i doubt it.
he's a genius. he is more knowledgeable than almost anybody else about this permaculture subject, but his humble tone and willingness to always try new and improved approaches shows me that he is always learning, growing personally, and trying to make a difference in the world. instead of always asking people for a handout, which is what so many others in this youtube space seem to do. he is showing up and coming young farmers how to do things profitably, but with a conscience. conscious capitalism anyone? his vision is to show that you can restore the land and soil while making a profit, maybe even more profit! keep it up richard!
he is one of the few voices out here that are proving that permaculture is not just a nice theory, but that it's a more sustainable and profitable way to farm. a real model farm.
yeah your thinking more about a farmers market model. in that case, you're absolutely right about variety bringing people to the table but its kinda hard to know where to draw the line. you need variety to attract people but, given to limited space and time/labor, you need to prioritize what's worthwhile to grow and whats not. seems like ridgedale is just refining their model and working doing the best they can do in their market at their SCALE. small ag learning from big ag once again. i do see how you can make the "slippery slope" argument that this moves them more towards conventional ag, but the stuff is organic, healthy, and local, so I'd say fair enough.
I do understand that REKO isn't quite the same as a farmer's market, but I find my response is much the same when buying in our local REKO equivalent. That may say more about me than the market, of course. I just think 'refining' is a dangerous attraction, to be watched squint-eyed.
I also think that this is a wrong approach. Not only because there is limited interest for "high value" crops such as radishes and turnips here in Sweden, but because this approach is very labour intensive. Doesn't make much sense to me, if you are trying to lower your labour input as you say Richard. They are actually not that profitable in my opinion, despite what Curtis Stone says, when you take into account that they are labour intensive and perishable and the uncertainty of growing less popular crops. We are going in the opposite direction, starting a little CSA on the side (30 shares) as a complement to restaurants and REKO.
Acetone is the safest organic solvent there is. Safer than ethyl alcohol which
we drink by the ounce/grams. It is produced in many biological processes
including in my liver. Since it is produced organically, it is readily removed by
our systems, again I cite my liver. This is not one to worry about.
so you would drink a glass of acetone?
Of course not, because drain bramage. I wouldn't go in for a glass
of good ol' all natural strychnine either. I am saying second hand
paper pots are less dangerous than second hand beer.
Now if you could merge thinner paper amounts whilst using seaweed it would be a win win all round. I guess the balance is then strength over crop germination as seaweed will decompose over a far shorter period. I'm interested to see if the paper does hold up or snaps on occasions. I'm sure it's a great tool, I don't doubt that for a minute seeing Curtis use it but the chains are still their after harvest (although Curtis has some crops out the ground in < 30 days) so how they get durability and shorten decomposition time I guess is the golden ticket for the chains.
Lots of work is being done with seaweed so it wouldn't surprise me if they try that route in the future. I would be glad if I could find the surface area to use a paperpot transplanter in the first place though! :) Nice video Richard, thanks.
Hey, In other videos you have mentioned that the paper pot chains are antifungal and separately that your paper pot provider in japan is bringing out a range of bio-degradable hemp paper pots that biodegrade much quicker? do you remove your paper pots after you've used them or leave them in? could you please comment on these points? Would be greatly appreciated! I'm very inspired by your channel. Best wishes.
Curtis did a video with a guy showing a technique to remove the paper chains post transplant, because the guy loved them so much that he used them for almost all his market garden. I agree that if there are traces of acetone in the glue they will be removed when you remove the persistent paper chains later in the season..
Angela Cross do you have the link?
It’s one of the wise earth farm videos.
I have cucumber, French beans, cauliflower and garlic on my high value list because I can either get a high price for them (beans, cauliflower and garlic), or they require almost no effort once once the initial labor investment is in (cucumber and garlic).
On the other hand, rocket, spinach, kale and coriander (cilantro) are on my low value list because they either have limited demand (kale and rocket), bolt quickly in our climate (rocket and coriander) or don't command a decent price in our area (rocket, spinach and kale).
Otherwise, my lists are similar. I still grow cabbage and broccoli, but only because the local climate makes them very productive. If our summers were hot I would avoid them.
Thank you Richard for your videos, Ill buy your paperpot next year when we buy a homestead. we are going to buy all our tools from your. Ill also going to buy your on line training. You do such a great job to inform and help others around the world. I see all your videos and I learn a lot from you. A very good weekend to you and your family. With kind regards Torben Gram, DK
Richard, for brassicas such as cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage etc would those cells be sufficient growth space?
Please share what you do to produce crops for your family, which will not be for sale to the public. How much actual garden space per family member? What do you grow specifically in your area for family consumption? How much time is (or will be) devoted to family food production? And what is the cost (labor, materials, etc.) to grow food for your own consumption? I always enjoy your videos, and best of luck with next year's spring/summer/fall crops.
I am really enjoying seeing the lasting influences of Maude Hélène, JM, and Curtis in this video, as I have seen your influence in Curtis' videos. Sadly, I've seen nothing from JM or Maude Hélène, so I can't say much about that. It has given me so much pleasure seeing you all interact this past year because you are all my current role models.
Happy Holidays and an Abundant New Year
Greatly appreciate your elaborate opinion on the chains! Your deep pensive thought is inspiring- hope you are getting a good recharge this offseason
The lower value ones are the better ones though, you should have a market garden and a kitchen garden, and keep them separate
I appreciate all this information. I got the paperpot 2 years ago and it has been so great. I am really interested in cutting hours, as my wife and I are going from a 50 member C.S.A. this year to a 100 next year. I was wondering if you could keep a few beds under a trial. I did trial beds with compost and days to harvest on spinach, as well as direct seeding v. Paperpot. I was wondering if there was more I could do in the trial like number of harvest before a crop out. Wether a crop out was worth it later in the year, if there was enough time to plant something like raab, or Asian greens. Time is the most important factor in a small farm, but how can that time be scheduled for your climate and season needs to be established I think, and this can be done with different mixes of compost and like you said, planting what in which bed.
Richard, I think you will find it hard to remove the paper chains from the bed. They start decomposing and you would have to look through and pick bits out which would be very time consuming.
Always stimulating, informative and a pleasure to hear about your thoughts, plans & intentions for each coming season!
Any packaging supplier local to Richard would be able to suggest local manufacturing and organic credentials for the paperpot I would think.
My opinion coming from someone who isn't doing the work would be to convert or make one garden at the 14meter length so you can get proper data on its speed and value relative to you
I remember you don't like the fact that you would need to keep importing paper chains from Japan if you use the system. Shipping fee is not an issue now that you've got your tool company, so how about this dependence on imported goods? Though it seems like a minor issue.
I feel like these could be easily made in respective forestry countries...... Scandinavian, Canada, japan, etc.
I was watching a video a while back (J.M. fortier I think) and the isue at that time was that the glue and the paper didn't work with the organic certification. I don't know if it has changed or if that's an isue for you.
@@KcarlMarXs yea, it's not like a kubota or or samuri sword, lol. paper, glue... pretty sure someone will figure it out.
You've got some really good ideas, I'm going to try to scale down a couple for my backyard garden
With your climate I think you should push the transplants out as late as possible. Keep them in the cover as long as you can get away with and still have the paperpot function. The more controlled time the better for successful transplants
Hi Richard, can you tell me the minimum space i will need at the end of my beds to be able to line the planter up at the start and run it out at the end?
If you scale down your beds in production maybe you could work in soil building crops, reduce your dependency on off site compost, and spend less time spreading compost.
If you use cardboard for weed suppression and it gets digested by worms, how different is that from the paperpot usage? I assume the use of cardboard is approved for organic certification? It would be good to make them rather than import them.
If I understood the video correctly, the main difference between standard cardboard and the paper chains are the chemicals in the glue that holds the cells together. Not sure if I understand that last bit though. Are you suggesting that Ridgedale manufacture their own cardboard? If so, that seems highly impractical.
Very interested in the reko selling model. Is there a Website to get more Information about it?
I think making set orders (as i understood it) would be anthithesis to what makes Reko work.
I as a customer specifically want custom orders, else its just a vegbox.
Am i missing something here?
It comes down to farmers offering what they want to sell. That obviously involves many factors, possibly including dialogue with customers, but it may not. I'm more interested in how 1 person can run a viable income from a 'normal' week when vegetable gardening at the moment
I wish they made a paperpot mini with everything half the size.
Sorry how will you remove acetone from paper pod once you have already planted it in your market garden. Will it not decompose or become part of your soil? I guess once you experiment then you will know it is not possible to remove the glue. it is a great product and i think it can be used. may be it needs some more modification and something reusable rather than buying paper pods. i know it will save manual labour massively hence offset the cost very easily but it should be reusable pods. great video as always
I am I have a family of a small and are looking for work in the farm
What made you decide to have beds that are 75cm wide, can I ask? And what was the space between the rows that you use?
If I may, 75 cm beds is pretty standard for market gardening because it allows stepping across or straddling. Also, nowadays a lot of the tools used are designed around this width. Not sure what Richard uses for space between beds but 30 cm is about max and less if you feel you can work with it.
I disagree on culling "low value" vegetables for the sake of profit. For starters, consumers want convenience. They don't want to procure their vegetables from 5+ different suppliers.
How scalable is regenerative agriculture if everyone just sells micro greens and salad mix? Surely mechanics of demand and supply are applicable irrespective how how a crop is grown. Is it about making money with market gardens or making a difference for a better tomorrow?
Certified naturally grown, here in the USA allows these, USDA organic has not yet yielded to practical reasoning
Hi Richard, i was about To buy the paperpot from terrateck as it was the easier to find in europe. Why did you choose to sell the japanese one?
Other question: will you sell the 5 row jang seeder that paperpot.co sells? Thks!
by the way, also check out the japanese Mukai seeder www.mukai-kogyo.co.jp/hands which is possibly one of the best in terms of price-quality (use google translate to browse their website). The seeder is available on alibaba.
Japanese one is better; lighter and in use for much longer. We don't have the 5 row seeder, Curtis worked with Jang to make custom shoes. I prefer the 6 row, which gives 6 or 12 rows to a 75cm bed. More versatile in that way. I may use the Jang, but can't see my own need really...
@@regenerativeagriculture thanks for the answer! And see you soon on the farmers tool!
I would ask paperpot transplant user, about extending beds. Im thinking thats where alot of time is saved, the longer the row the better. Maybe remover sawdust from half and you will know very soon. Glad luck.
I would love to start a reko group here in the states but the brochure is in Finnish! I'm curious how you could bring this model here. You could start your own group sure, but having a brand and a model seems like the way to go. I'm in a very saturated market so doing sales online seems like a good fit here. Also curious how the software system works. do you buy it from reko? how much support do you get from that side? or are you using your own ordering software you bought previous to starting with a reko group?
It's no special software, Facebook is the platform used. It is just a group on FB where producers announce the things they sell, and consumers make their orders as a comment to the post. There will also be a corresponding group for producers only, to discuss matters concerning only them. A administrator looks after the groups to make sure things runs smoothly and according to the rules set. A set place, day and time is decided for the deliverance, all meet up and goods and money are exchanged. The day after, the admin deletes all former posts and producers are free to make new ones.
thanks for your responses. didn't understand how this worked exactly.
@@finchj9b that sounds great but how do you plan your production for the season? could see that being quite the challenge. seems like most people who do reko must have had a reasonable customer base beforehand to at least get some sense of what the demand would be. i could see this working well in conjunction with other sales outlets like traditional farmers markets and maybe restaurant sales to supplement. i got the growing part to some extent but figuring out how to balance production to not overproduce has been quite the challenge.
Will you be selling the acrylic seeder as a stand-alone product?
It's for sale, see links in shownotes
Thanks! My mistake. Are you going to be selling the Mutineer from Neversink? @@regenerativeagriculture
No
I think it's a wonderful investment, especially since you are doing so much transplanting in your climate. I look forward to seeing the changes!
Kudos for not trying to make it sound like you invented it 😉
Acetane or acetone or acetate?
Question. Will the Acetone affect the earthworms? If the earthworm population keeps increasing, it's organic enough.
no actually the acetone is found in all cardboard and news print and my worm farm goes through them first before anything else is eaten
Great video. ..ty
In regards to the paperpot transplanter, we are very frustrated in Canada. If we use it we cannot be Certified Organic. However, we import produce for the US that is 'Certified Organic' and they are allowed to use the paperpot transplanter. This is completely unfair in consideration of time, energy & cost required to transplant. How can we compete with that!
No, certified naturally grown allows the paperpot. Certified Organic does not allow it yet.
30 crowns = 4 euro. For 6 radishes?
Yea. and €28 for a chicken too.
I market garden and can see the logic in just growing whats profitable which in the Curtis Stone model is basically salad and baby root veg. By looking at Richards list this seems to be what he is going for. But I think Like everything it needs to be balance, prioritize and have the highly profitable stuff as your bread and butter, but you need to still do stuff you enjoy growing and attracts people, which will be different for everyone. I think if everyone jumps on the Curtis Stone model of just salad and highly specialized, it wont be long before these crops and model become far less profitable. I can feel for Richard, I think he is burnt out and needing a well deserved break!
I like your band aid. 😂
Love it!
Of course using a paperpot transplanter saves a lot of time, using a tractor is even better if you think the same way. The spacing of the paperpot chains is about the same of using and tractor with hoes but I can't expand my plot. The lost space is about 50% on many crops.
Since I cannot use anymore fabrics to keep weeds low and that I have to lose space and cannot interplant and do real intensive market gardening then I think the paperpot is an hybrid gadget.
The time you save transplanting is actually the time you'll lose unweeding because you can't use fabrics and the low density means more weeds !
I forget to mention that you'll have to keep buying paperpot chains.
is this durable agriculture, losing cultivating space to use this machine and spending my time unweeding and keeping buying pot chains ?
You may have a look to Connor Crickmore's Never sink Farm. He runs a small farm, uses no landscape fabrics and a lot of paperpot transplanting. And he develops methods to use paperpot in space where the transplanteter doesn't work.
Like Perma Pen UK - my concern if I was you would be the reduction in your offerings. Many years ago I was in grocery retail. Our fresh veg was under performing and we cut out the products that were not selling fast enough so causing waste. The profit on the veg did increase but our overall shop sales fell. Also you will lose the connection to some degree by dropping the CSA. Telling your loyal supporting customers you no longer want them. They're bound to feel rejected.
Yes profit is important but think it through a bit - you're the proponent of holistic management and this seems to be taking things in isolation that could have unexpected results.
I think I will stay with my planting stick. You only transplant the best plants.
Fresh Direct, an online food delivery service, has a farm to table program but they still take a decent amount of the profit. It might still be worth it because of the ease of having a truck come to you and them doing the sales through their platform, but and you lose that direct sales advantage and opportunity to interact with customers. This also seems like a model for more established and probably larger scale enterprises than a market garden. unfortunately, this is the direction i see the organic local food scene going rather than the reko model...
Monoculture?
Wait, this isn't tf2!