Tuesday, September 12th, 2017
Our first day back at the orchard after our summer semester break! While students were enjoying a mini 'offseason', the Sust Ag program managers were up to their eyeballs (and further) in plant growth, harvest, pest management and market.
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| Stunted corn- damaged by wireworm! |
As usual, we started the day with a little walk around to see what the plants had to say. We observed there was lots of corn ready, and lots of stunted corn! We noticed this problem starting up earlier in the season and even discovered the culprit - wireworm!
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| Wireworm in young corn root. Photo taken July 27/2017 at the Orchard. |
Wireworms are attracted to the CO2 emitted into the soil from plant roots. They follow the CO2 'trail' and when they get to the roots, they eat them! How rude. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot we can do in the midst of the season. Isabel is running a trial to help test the efficacy of a pathogen to control wireworm. There are various other strategies organic farmers can employ, but since wireworms can live up to 6 years in the soil before they morph into their adult phase of life (the click beetle), they must be managed with an eye to the long term. Maybe we can develop a market for click beetles, and make trapping them on the farm an economically beneficial activity.
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| Nearly empty Brassica patch. Beans galore in the background |
Our cabbage and cauliflower have come and gone, and now all thats left is brussel sprouts in the Brassica patch. Pretty soon the empty space will be planted with a cover crop. In the background there you can see bean support systems holding up glorious beanage like you've never seen before. Our farm managers Torin and Grace were hard at work harvesting beans yesterday. Funny story - beans don't look all that menacing but they actually have very small spiky spines on them. If you harvest lots of them without long sleeves on you could scratch up your arms pretty good. I've never bean more surprised to hear such a story about a plant!
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| Potatos, mid senescence |
The vegetative parts of out potato crops are starting to flop over sideways - but thats normal, its called senescence. One of the differences a consumer will notice between the various potatoe varieties they may buy are the thickness and toughness of the skins. Potato skins will harden if left in the ground after senescence, increasing their storage life. Its typical for organic growers to mow the vegetative portion once senescence really kicks in, which is what we will be doing soon. I was going to ask our instructor Mike to elaborate further on this topic, but he moved onto another subject, and I didn't want to interrupt him mid senescence.
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| Our squash patch, under attack my mildew |
The squash patch seems to have set fruit nicely, however it is battling a mildew attack. This is common on the coast, and as fall moves in more and more moisture will become present and probably exacerbate the problem. Mildew does not get into the fruit so there is no problem there - however it will start to kill leaves and reduce photosynthesis and therefore yield. Hopefully those leaves can hang in there and keep pumping that wonderful sugar filled sun juice they make into the sweet squash!
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| These pumpkins stay green and are grown for their tasty green seeds |
You know how you carve pumpkins to make Jack-o-lanterns and the seeds that come out are
not green? Exactly! Now, where do you think those green pumpkin seeds that you buy in bulk at the grocery store come from? Thats right! There are pumpkin growers out there growing varieties that have been bred for the specific purpose of producing those little green seeds we all love. We are growing a few this year and they aren't even orange if you can believe it!
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| An unripe butternut squash |
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| A warty yet tasty pumpkin. Variety name: Galeux D'Eysines |
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| More Galeux D'Eysines |
Last year I tried this orange/white warty pumpkin for the first time. I made pumpkin pie from
this recipe and got great feedback from everyone I made it for. Don't let the warts scare you off! These tasty pumpkins are great for pies and general lovely sweet squash recipes. They are so beautiful they are practically Galeux'ing.
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| A Happy Harvest! |
Once the walk about was done we did some quick work harvesting a whole bunch of veggies - celery, corn, potatos, beets. That stuff all got hauled off to the market at Minoru Plaza, but not before everyone posed for a photo with the harvest in the back of the truck!
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This beautiful large stowaway spider snuck its way back to campus in the celery.
Thats my pinky finger for size comparison. |
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| 4 Sust Aggies appearing similar |
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| Students examining Rep 3 of the Kale trial |
To cap off the day we went out to the terraces on the Richmond campus where we are running a Kale trial. There are many varieties of Kale being tried here and we are interested in assessing many characteristics - flavour, texture, resistance to pests, etc. We all lined up with a Kale variety and Mike quizzed us on the characteristics and recorded our responses. The students reckon that by the end of the semester we are going to be savvy Kale-oisseurs, able to identify the Kale variety simply by smell. If only we could be so lucky as to receive that much exposure to Kale in one lifetime, but we get the pleasure of it all in one semester!
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| Sweet Sorghum |
As I left campus a little later I took a photo of the 'little' stand of sweet sorghum Mike has planted in the terrace garden. These plants are now a sturdy 12-15 feet tall, starting to form seed heads. Apparently if you chew on the stalks they actually taste quite sweet. But don't chew on them for too long, or else you will get sor-ghums!
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