Know Your Roots
Mike Biltonen of Know Your Roots offers consultations for small, medium, and large growers of tree fruit, grapes, small fruit, and more. Our consultation focus is regenerative using organic, biodynamic and holistic agronomic principles and practices.
As a career-long grower, my capacity for helping others get started, developing management plans, and for solving problems without the use of toxic chemicals and fertilizers is unparalleled. Though I cut my teeth as a novice grower as a budding horticulture student and while working at a large commercial orchard and knowing basically nothing about fruit growing at the time, it didn’t take me long to realize just how damaging conventional farming was to the environment. I have been on the path of sustainable farming ever since – that was 40 years ago.
Today, I work with principles and practices that introduce and transition growers to holistic and biodynamic principles and practices that rely heavily on the concept of ‘vitalism’. Vitalism is the concept that farming interactively with the natural farmscape through the use of natural techniques such as plant and compost teas, biodynamic preparations, and holistic practices that help create a healthy resilient agricultural environment for all life and living organisms including the farmer and customer.
Crop focus is primarily, but not limited to, apples, pears, stone fruit, small fruit, and grapes, though I dabble in vegetable crops, cannabis, and livestock as elements of a broader, ecosystem-focused, integrated farmscape. My consulting regions are New York, New Jersey, and parts of New England.