Week 6, Continue harvesting at Terrace, KPU Richmond

  

Hello All! I hope you folks are having a joyful transition from spring to summer!

This post is summary of last week's activities at the terrace garden on June 7th, and at the orchard on June 9th.

Students and faculty members harvested a variety of vegetables at the Terrace garden to market the products at the second Kwantlen Street Farmers Market, held Tuesday afternoon.

A range of leafy greens, lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, scallion and basil, as well as peas were harvested and rinsed in water, measured and packed.

 
Kathy (left) and Anna (right), rinsing the veggies

Mini notes for companion planting:

Tomato belongs to the family Solanaceae (including other common summer crops such as egg plant, pepper, potato, and so on...), which goes well with crops from basil's family Lamiaceae (many herbs such as mint, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage...  ) as in our garden plot. Solanaceae can also be teamed up with leguminous crops (such as clovers, vetches, beans and peas...), or plants from the Liliaceae family (many onion species such as chives, leeks, green onions).

Other examples of this type of pairing include:

• eggpant + green onion, 
• radish + kale, 
• cucumber + chives and so on.

It is important not to plant Leguminous and Liliaceae species too close each other!!

We also staked the indeterminate tomato plants, but not the determinate tomato plants.

Determinate (bushy) varieties, grow compact (3-4') but bushy, vegetative growth stops when top buds set the fruit, and all tomato ripen up around at the same time. These tend not to require much staking for structural support. It is best not to prune, or "sucker" these plants to ensure high fruit yield.

Golden nugget tomato is an example of a determinate variety

Indeterminate varieties, grow tall (around 6' but sometimes up to 10') and continue to produce fruit throughout the growing season until they are killed by a frost. They require substantial support of staking and sucker pruning to ensure good quality fruit.

Indigo Rose is an example of an indeterminate variety

Sungold is an example of an indeterminate variety

Sucker pruning is an important activity to open up the canopy and allow more air circulation through the canopy to prevent disease associated with long periods of leaf wetness. Solanaceae crops, including tomato and potato, are susceptible hosts of Early and Late Blight, caused by fungal pathogens. Pruning and opening up the lower canopy can help prevent disease outbreak.  

Our tomatoes are getting really vigorous and starting to fruit. Come and check these beautiful plants and fruits at terrace!

Pruning basil can extend the vegetative stage of growth. When some leafy greens start to bolt (flower), pinching off the flower shoot tips triggers production of a hormone called auxin which accumulates in secondary shoots below apical meristem (the second node becomes the uppermost node by removing the top), producing bushier plants.

Lambsquarters is a nutritious wild leafy green. The leaf, stem, flower can be consumed in raw or cooked form. When eating in raw, small quantities are recommended due to its contents of oxalic acids, which are removed by cooking. Lambsquarters are very low in saturated fat and cholesterol, but are good sources of iron, magnesium, phosphorous, dietary fibers, amino acids, and many others!              

We succesfully carried out the second Kwantlen Street Market, which is held from 3 to 7 pm every Tuesday in the parking lot of KPU's Richmond campus. Come and say hi when you got some free time :)

Caroline answers a customer's questions.

I found that standing in a stall to sell farm products as a farmer is very fascinating and meaningful bridge between production and consumption. When people encounter "new" or untried crops, they first want to know how to cook them and how they taste. How they grow is a secondary question to consumers. As a farmer selling produce, I need to know how the veggies are grown and how they can be cooked.

Yes, farmers should be chefs too!

On June 9th, we worked on orchard floor management at the KPU Orchard. We also seeded an orchard grass cover mix for cover between the rows of fruit trees.

We weeded the vegetable beds, and checked for emergence of newly-seeded crops.

Chard emerging

Carrots emerging

We checked the potato beds for late blight and tuber flea beetle damage.
   

We inspected the cherry trees, which were exuding tree sap due to disease. We decided to remove the infected trees, unfortunately.
  

One big lesson here is to chose crop species based on their ecological boundaries, instead of emphasizing the commercial aspect while neglecting the ecological or biological characteristics.

Altering the agro-ecosystem to make it more favourable to the chosen crops requires substantial investment of time, energy, resources, and money. Cherry trees do not usually grow in this climate, so planting them means a lot of management and investment to ensure acceptable yield to cover the costs of inputs in general.

As a farmer who is responsible for farming ecologically, socially, and economically, finding the right balance between those three criteria is definitely a tough life-time assignment. Yet pursuing a sustainable way of farming is necessary to live continuously in today's chaotic world, and I am excited to be involved with this problem-solving group in the KPU sustainable agriculture program.

Come and join us!

Have a great summer everyone,

Take it easy!