Kirklin Gardens
Farmer
Markets
About
We are a family farm with one employee. We grow approximately 500 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, oats, and black beans, and about 3 acres of cut flowers and produce.
Programs and Partners
Production Practices
Our field crop operations would currently be described as "conventional," meaning that we do use synthetic chemicals in our operations, but we are very aware of the need to protect the safety of our food and environment. To this end, we practice crop rotation to limit insect and disease transmission, we employ conservation tillage and plant cover crops to nurture soil health, we leave significant areas of natural habitat to encourage wildlife and pollinators, and we limit the use of chemicals to those for which there is a need (i.e., we soil test for fertilizer needs, and we spray herbicides and fungicides only when there is reason to believe that a problem needs to be solved rather than on a predetermined schedule. Our spraying practices include close attention to protection of water, pre-harvest intervals, and prevention of spray drift.
The same principles apply to our produce and cut flower operations.
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