FIELD SCHOOL - Fall 2025 at Crooked Farmz

[Sean Smith]

Dear all,

Announcing our Fall 2025 FIELD SCHOOL offerings at Crooked Farmz. Please share widely with your farming, gardening and growing networks.

FIELD SCHOOL is Crooked Farmz' annual pedagogical program blending theory, practical, hands-on worker bee, mutual aid, shared lunch, and community. All workshop participants receive complementary compost tea for their own gardening and growing projects.

Our Fall 2025 FIELD SCHOOL package focuses on COMPOSTING AND REGENERATION. Scheduled workshops include:

1. JADAM Liquid Fertilizer (Oct. 9)
2. Three-Bin Composting (Oct. 16)
3. Vermicomposting (Oct. 23)
4. Bokashi (Oct. 30)
5. Johnson-Su Composting (Nov. 6)

All workshops will take place at the Crooked Farmz plot at the Many Hands Urban Farm in Downsview Park. It is $10 or pwyc to join a FIELD SCHOOL event as a full Participant. If you enjoy the topic but cannot make the event or you would like to support our pedagogical program otherwise, you can also choose to become a Sponsor so that we can continue to offer pwyc flexibility for our field schools.

To see full workshop descriptions and to register, please visit: https://crookedfarmz.localline.ca/my-products/category/fall-field-school-2025 or see below.

Thank you and best wishes! :)

Sean

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 Crooked Farmz

 Brewing fresh compost teas and extracts for microbial health
 in agriculture, horticulture and arboriculture.

 crookedfarmz.net // @crookedfarmz // 416.669.1997

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 Don't Feed the Plant, Feed the Soil!

 Crooked Farmz is a Certified Compost Facility Operator

 with the Compost Council of Canada.

1. JADAM Liquid Fertilizer

Thursday, October 9, 11am-1pm; $10/pwyc
JADAM is a branch of the larger natural farming school of practice, developed by Korean farmer and agricultural biologist Youngsang Cho. The emphasis of JADAM lies in growing high-quality, healthy and vital produce using low-cost DIY inputs. JADAM Liquid Fertilizer (JLF) is one such tool from his DIY handbook, which focuses on fermentation to extract plant-available nutrients. The philosophy is simple and elegant: as the JADAM farming manual states, "things similar to my crops are good for my crops". This means that we can take the residues and non-marketable produce from our crops to make a ferment from them and feed next season's crop, or even another succession in the same season. But it also means that we can take what we would consider "weeds" from the same plant family to create the ferment, as these will have similar nutrient demands and forms of expression, and thus can contribute in similar fashion to the resulting fertilizer. In this Fall Field School offering, we will go through the process of harvesting plants from the field to begin a new batch of JLF, learning about the varied benefits that each one might bring to a fermented fertilizer. We will use our noses to smell different ferments, discuss application rates, and more.

2. Three-Bin Composting

Thursday, October 16, 11am-1pm; $10/pwyc

The three-bin system of composting offers a humble but powerful technology and series of techniques for efficiently producing high-quality compost in an urban setting. It is designed for composting using aerobic processes; that is, they are defined by the microbial breakdown of organic matter in the presence of oxygen. The trio of adjacent bins represents three stages of decomposition -- building, aerating, curing -- which are engaged in a cyclical process through the system to ensure a constant supply of compost. The three-bin system may be engaged as a cold "add-as-you-go" composting technique, but works best as a hot or "thermophilic" technique. In this Fall Field School offering, we will work through the theory and practice of thermophilic composting, with specific reference to the three-bin system. We'll build a pile with particular focus on feedstocks, ratios, bulking agents, and monitoring strategies that can be used for thermophilic composting at any scale.

3. Vermicomposting

Thursday, October 23, 11am-1pm; $10/pwyc

Worms are the great geoengineers, capable of breaking down organic matter into more basic nutrient building blocks for plant fertility. They are also capable of aerating a soil through their tunneling activities. Vermicomposting is a unique form of composting that takes these properties of the worm to create a "livestock" system for breaking down quantities of organic wastes, typically from leftover kitchen scraps. The result is a rich, nutrient-dense form of casting or manure that may be used to amend soil in either the garden or nursery prior to planting, as a side-dress for plants in the middle stages of growth, or as a tea to be applied at any stage of the life cycle. Worm farm systems are highly scalable, ranging from a small plastic container under the sink to large-scale industrial operations capable of producing hundreds of yards of worm castings each year. In this Fall Field School offering, we will learn about different types of worms and the specific worms used for composting, so that we can create our own vermicomposting bins to take home. We'll collectively discuss techniques for maintenance, harvesting and application, plus the ethics of being a worm farmer.

4. Bokashi

Thursday, October 30, 11am-1pm; $10/pwyc

Typically, composting methods revolve around "aerobic" processes; that is, they are defined by microbial breakdown of organic matter in the presence of oxygen. This is the true meaning of the word "decomposition". But there are other techniques for breaking down and recycling organic matter in the absence of oxygen, ie. that are "anaerobic". Bokashi is one such technique, and it is closer to "fermentation" than decomposition. Bokashi is a very unique approach that is particularly beneficial for indoor composting, especially over the winter. It also has the added benefit of retaining more nutrients in plant-accessible form than traditional aerobic composting methods. In this Fall Field School offering, we will work through the theory and practice of bokashi technique, learn about EM-1 ("effective micro-organisms"), build bokashi bins at various scales, and tap fermented leachate ("bokashi tea") for participants to take home as a fall soil amendment.

5. Johnson-Su Composting

Thursday, November 6, 11am-2pm; $10/pwyc

Johnson-Su composting (J/S) is a method that is gaining increased interest in agricultural contexts for its ability to rapidly inoculate and remediate poor soils. It achieves this by balancing a significant upfront effort in aeration, irrigation, and pile design before doing nothing and letting the compost sit untouched for at least a year, creating a highly fungal "no-till" compost that nudges soils further up the scale of plant ecological succession. The compact size of a typical J/S bioreactor makes it ideal for urban farmers, community gardens, and other backyard growers who seek high quality inoculating compost on a limited land footprint. In this Fall Field School offering, we will go through the process of building a Johnson-Su bioreactor from scratch, including its physical infrastructure, selection of feedstocks and their various preparation techniques, and the principles behind successful thermophilic composting.