QUORUMAG

Steve’s CSI programs

A season’s program, to keep.

One crop’s season, stage by stage, in Steve’s own words. Coming soon as a PDF to print, or a printed book posted to you.

What’s in one

  • The critical stages

    Each window of the season, what the plant is building in it, and what it needs from you then. The part you’ll come back to most.

  • The tests

    When to take a sap sample or a soil test, and the targets the numbers are read against.

  • What goes on, and why

    The foliar schedule and the fertigation beside it, stage by stage, with the reason for each. And the flight plan: the season as a table, day by day, to print for the spray shed.

  • Out in the crop

    What healthy and what trouble look like at each stage, the handheld meters and the Brix and boron test between lab reports, and a quick guide from what you see to what to do.

  • A last check before harvest

    A gate that tells you how the crop will store, or for beans how the pods will hold up, before it’s picked.

  • The thinking behind it, and painted for the shed

    The four levels of plant health, two ways to make the change, why potassium is earned and how to handle nitrogen, a glossary, and his charts drawn again among the site’s paintings.

Opening soon

The programs go on sale here soon, as a PDF or a printed book. Leave your email, and we’ll tell you when.

Hear when the shop opens

The programs

Three crops, so far.

The programs aren’t on sale here yet. Hear when the shop opens. Meanwhile, the program builder starts from Steve’s onion, apple and bean programs, free.

  • Watercolour of two onions with their leaves: one whole in its papery skin, one cut in half to show its rings.

    Onions

    Five stages sowing to maturity

  • Watercolour of an apple branch with two red-blushed apples.

    Apples

    Eight stages a year, leaf drop to harvest

  • Watercolour of a bush bean plant with white flowers and hanging green pods.

    Green beans

    Seven stages sowing to harvest

  • Onions

    A 150 to 180 day season, from germination to the storage gate before the shed door closes. Built around calcium at bulb initiation, when the number of cells, and so the size the bulbs can reach, is set.

  • Apples

    The whole year, starting the day the last apple leaves the tree, when the winter wash builds the reserves next spring runs on. With the fruit-tissue storage gate, and the year as a poster across two pages.

  • Green beans

    A 60 to 70 day crop, and a legume, so its nitrogen works differently: the Day 14 nodule check decides what goes on. It ends at the harvest gate, quality at first pick, and what to change before the next crop.

Plan your own crop in the builder, or read how a CSI program works.