Although the snow has melted away for now, the air was still uncomfortably cold with a high of only 4 degrees. but with the snow gone, spring is just around the corner, and the hustle to get ready to grow begins. Today we are on campus making more transplants (Brassicas this time) as well as checking up on other things happening on campus.
we started off our class listening to a presentation on currents done by Rebecca. Currants belong the Genus Ribes. there are threee major types of currants: red, white and black. Goose berries also belong to the same genus, and are very popular in England. The genus Ribes is very popular in northern European cultures for good reason: it is incredibly hardy. Currants can survive in much harsher climates than many other fruit trees an bushes, and unlike most fruit trees, can tolerate very wet soil conditions. This hardiness makes them an ideal candidate for the orchard, as we much replace our dying cherry trees with something that is a little better suited to the wet climate. Unfortunately, people have forgotten how to use currants in cooking, which makes them a bit of a tough marketing sell, but I think we can look at this as an opportunity to re-educate our population on a food that is deeply ingrained in our history.
after our presentation on currants we heard Kirsten's Web of life project on the bacteria Bacillus Thuringenesis (BT). It was interesting to learn That BT is actually more than just the M in GMO's, but is actually a bacteria that is quite useful in organic production in its' natural form due to the fact that it only affects an organism once triggered by the specific pH in its' hosts gut and has a wide variety of strains that affect different organisms.
After hearing presentations, we headed out into the parking lot to take a look at what Torin was working on while we were all on reading break. Turns out while we were all catching up on sleep and "reading" Torin was busy making KPU's first chicken tractor! when I first saw the tractor I thought it looked a little small, but then Torin explained that the run portion of the tractor actually goes underneath the roosting portion of the tractor, doubling the moving around space the same way an extra floor in one's home would double living space. This design allows for the tractor to be more compact and easier to tow while still complying with organic standards in terms of square feet for each chicken.
This coup willl be able to comfertably hold 15 hens, which in a production sense is not much, but because these coups are actually going to be a part of an experiment KPU will be running on the orchards this summer, Torin will be making coups! that should be more than enough space for us to try our hand at rotational grazing of chickens. Of course there are still a few kinks to work out. While this version of the coup will do a great job at keeping out predators, it is a bit too heavy to be moving 6 of them every single day. Torin will be planning on replacing some of the 2x4's with lighter pieces of wood, which will not only lighten the load but open up the space a bit more for the chickens. That's ok Torin, by the time you make the 6th coup, I bet it will be nice enough for me to live in!
after checking out the new chicken tractor, we decided to walk out to the terraces to see how our cover crop and perennials have survived this unusually cold winter.
Nearly all of our perennials seem to have hardy and alive stems underneath the thick cover of hay we laid last fall. Some of them are even already starting to pop up through the hay! although we won't be able to fully tell until it's warm enough to take off the straw, things are looking good! the cover crop is also really starting to take over the terraces nicely, soon it will be time to transplant!
our last task of the day was to start up new transplants and monitor the ones we did last week. This time around, we are going to experiment with a soil blocker and see how well our transplants do in it as opposed to regular trays. If the seedlings do well in the blocked trays, it could eliminate labor involved in making transplants in the future as well as reduce the damage that is often caused by trying to pry transplants out of traditional trays, making the transplanting process much smoother.
Using this soil blocker requires changing up our recipe for the soiless growing media we have been using, so we all took turns mixing in the extra sand, compost and water, trying to make that perfect peanut butter mixture.
of course we still need some of our original recipe for traditional trays so we can compare the two, and luckily we didn't have to get our hands dirty for that part because Torin came in with a drill!
Last item on the agenda was to take our newly seeded transplants to the transplant room, and water our transplants from last week as well as record the emergence rate of each of our trays. You don't really realize how important this delicate first phase of farming is until you see trays sitting with only half of the plugs actually growing. Creating perfect soiless media, temperature, planting depth, water levels, and light levels still won't guarantee that your entire tray sprouts.
All in all it would seem that we accomplished quite a few things on campus today, and with spring just around the corner the pressure is on to get things ready!
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