Tunnel and pests

The lower terrace is completely planted now.

Today we planted sunflowers along the north edge of the upper terrace.

Yesterday the students transplanted warms season crop... tomatoes, peppers, basil, cucumbers, squash, and even some tobacco. They erected a small high tunnel over a section of the warm season beds. We have the same crops growing inside and outside the tunnel, to allow some comparison of yield and disease pressure, but this won't be a randomized or replicated trial. Compost donated by Harvest Power is incorporated from the centre of the tunnel west, and compost donated by Net Zero compost is incorporated from the centre of the tunnel east.

 

The tunnel is just five feet tall. It consists of a 16-foot square of 6 mil UV-resistant plastic supported by five PVC hoops anchored by re-bar. Two more pieces of plastic form the end walls. Indoor weed management will require us to crouch a little.  The site doesn't get much wind, so I hope it will hold up through the season.

The tunnel should help keep tomato leaves dry, to prevent late blight infection. I am very concerned about late blight now that our nights are warming up. We do not yet have a trickle irrigation systems set up, so we are still relying on sprinklers, which could contribute to prolonged periods of leaf wetness and greater risk of late blight infection.

We capped the pop-up sprinklers near the potatoes so that the water would go down into the soil, instead of up into the foliage.

Last week we received some donated tomato transplants from a student in our program. I brought them up to the lab that day, and back to my home on Saturday. That's when I started to see these water-soaked lesions with indistinct margins on the tomato leaves... a possible symptom of late blight. I disposed of the tomatoes, but put a few infected leaves in a sealed plastic freezer bag with a piece of damp tissue to promote sporulation. Twenty-four hours later I created a slides from the infected tissue for inspection under a compound microscope. Although I saw plenty of spores, I was glad that none had the characteristic lemon-shape that would confirm late blight.

The lettuce that we seeded on Thursday had emerged by yesterday. The row on the bottom in the image above was seeded with the Jang Seeder, and the row above was seeded with the Earthway. The thick rows in between the lettuce are purslane from the soil seedbank, which we left as a living mulch between the lettuce.

Our initial impression is that both seeders planted the lettuce seed too thickly, and there appear to be more bare patches in the row seeded by the Earthway. So soon after emergence, bare patches could be due to deeper seed placement, rather than lack of seed. We'll see if anything changes as the plants grow. 

Yesterday the students harvested kale and spinach and pulled a row of spinach that was going to seed, replacing it with kale transplants.

Today we harvested our first peas.

The students filled in any holes in the Swiss chard rows of the compost rate trial with transplants, now that collection of emergence data is complete, and we don't expect further emergence.

 

Some of our beans are infested with black bean aphid, but they also support a strong population of lady beetles, which should help keep the aphid numbers in check. We're seeing lady beetle eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults. 

The lupines and wildflowers are starting to bloom at the end of the terrace, providing nectar sources for beneficial insects, like the hoverflies that are plentiful in this area. They should also help with the aphids.

Compost and Seeders

Net Zero Waste dropped off another donated load of compost yesterday. The students spread it this morning, and Anna picked up another load from Harvest Power to cover the remainder of the campus terrace plots.

Working with two different municipal composters will give us a chance to see how their products compare over the course of the growing season. Harvest Power offers the advantage of being nearby. Their Richmond composting facility is the largest municipal composting operation in the region, and is just 10 km east of campus. In addition to making compost, they have a biogas digester to make methane from green bin waste, which fuels a generator to make electricity. Harvest Power is a big American company, with locations in nine US states, plus Ontario and British Columbia.

Net Zero Waste is a much smaller BC-based business, located 85 km east of campus, in Abbotsford. They are experimenting with compost-heated greenhouses, and they are the only company in our area to offer an OMRI-listed compost. OMRI is the "Organic Materials Review Institute," a nonprofit that determines whether agricultural inputs are allowed for use on certified organic farms. The Net Zero compost generally contains less plastic than the Harvest Power compost.

The biggest problem with the Net Zero compost has been getting it to campus. A student from Langley brought a couple of loads in his pickup truck earlier this spring, and a Net Zero sales rep brought the load we spread this morning.

Harvest Power compost (left) and Net Zero compost (right).

Unamended sandy soil (foreground), Net Zero compost (center) and Harvest Power compost (background).
All plots were sown to lettuce, spinach, and Swiss chard. The plants are growing
better in the compost than in the sand, and those in the Net Zero plot are a
bit bigger than those in the Harvest Power plot.

  

In most of the terrace gardens we incorporate the compost into the sand, rather than leaving it on top. The students learned to use the roto-tillar attachment on a BCS walk-behind tractor to accomplish this task this morning.

I also gave a demonstration of 'double digging' as a way to loosen soil and incorporate material without inverting the soil profile. Double digging is probably better suited to heavier soils than ours.

Here is a video I took in Kentucky, showing double digging in a heavy clay soil in
a high tunnel. The background music is my Old-Time band, The Raging Acorns.

The students top-dressed the potatoes with a little more compost.



The pac choi seems to be re-sprouting after Tuesday's harvest.

We seeded adjacent rows of lettuce with a Jang Seeder (top) and an Earthway Seeder (bottom) in order to compare the two push seeders. The Jang Seeder costs about $500, and the Earthway is just $130. The Jang is much heavier, and went through the mix of compost and sand more smoothly. When the lettuce emerges we'll see whether it lives up to its reputation as a more precise seeder.

First day of class

 The Agroecosystem Management class accomplished a lot in the campus terrace gardens today.

They harvested 4 kg of spinach, 3.5 kg of radishes, 3.5 kg of pac choi and 2.3 kg of kale. That's on top of 4 kg of spinach, 4 kg of radishes, 1 kg of kale and half a kilo of pak choi that folks took home between semesters, not to mention the neighbors who surreptitiously helped themselves in the dark of night.

If my math is right, that's more than 23 kg of greens harvested from about 15 square meters before the middle of May... equivalent to about a third of a pound per square foot, which is a reasonable yield for these crops in a small mixed farming operation (Rutgers pdf).

The plots looked well picked over by the time they were done.

They trellised the peas and beans. 

They collected emergence data from the compost trial and thinned the lettuce, beet, and chard seedlings in the trial.

They cut the cover crop of winter wheat.

 They spread about two yards of hot Harvest Power compost on the lower terrace. 

They hilled the potatoes and weeded the carrots. 

I explained that the cucurbit seedlings are hardening off under row covers on my deck because they were suffering from lack of light under the grow lights in our lab.

The tomato, pepper, and basil seedlings are there too, recovering nicely from sun scald.

They have plenty of botanical companions on our back deck.

We also have herbs in pots, just off the kitchen, where they get visited by our cat...

and kids.

Campus terrace beds at at the start of the summer semester

Our students will have plenty of spinach, bok choi, kale and radishes to harvest when the summer semester starts tomorrow. They'll also trellis the snap peas and broad beans that are trying to climb the terrace wall. 

The greens have grown tremendously since the spring semester ended two weeks ago. Here's what they looked like on April 28th.

Here's what they looked like a month ago, on April 8th. 

The vegetables are growing right in front of campus, on sandy beds used to grow a lawn for the past 22 years. 

The students tore out the sod last fall and planted a cover crop of winter wheat. We hoped it would add some organic matter to the sandy soil when we tilled it in, but the wheat has not grown well. It is turning yellow before setting seed, suggesting a severe lack of nitrogen.

In addition to the cover crop we've added a two inch layer of compost from two municipal composting facilities, Harvest, here in Richmond, and Net Zero Waste, in Abbotsford. This is compost made from they city's green bins.

The compost is weed free, but the sand seems to have a seed bank rich in purslane. We may leave some of it between our vegetable rows to serve as an edible living mulch.

Hello World

I teach an applied course in 'Agroecosystem Management.' I require each of my students to maintain a blog to serve as a farm record-keeping system, and an archive of their ideas as they work through the course. It only seems fair that I would have a blog too, so here it is.