Week 8 (June 21st and 23rd) Progress

It is hard to believe that eight weeks of the semester have gone by, and so quickly already. It is also hard to believe that there have already been three farmers markets on the Richmond KPU campus. With that being said, though, there is still a lot of time to do things that we (the students and professors) want to do this semester, and time to make changes for the betterment of the terraces and the orchard. With lots of hard work, through good and bad weather, we were able to reach our goals this week and problem-solve, as we usually do, on the fly!

The Tuesday class (June 21st) was a quieter harvest day for the terraces. We did not have as much to harvest as we usually do (well, besides lettuce that is) so we spent some time going through the terrace gardens talking about what had been done recently and what needed to be done that day.

The tomatoes, at that point bearing young fruit, were looking good. The indeterminate tomatoes needed to be trellised to support their hefty vegetative growth. This was to be done by a few students with 4-5 foot stakes and string, creating a weave pattern that was to support several plants between each stake. Unfortunately for the Bonnie Best variety of tomatoes, they had been planted in an area that had not received compost last year, so their growth has been rather underwhelming. We will be adding some alfalfa and bone meal to the soil around them next week to give them a boost. However, there was some good news on the tomato front: we do not have late blight, so far. Mike, one of our professors, had taken a leaf sample of what he had suspected to late blight and had let it sporulate in a plastic bag. When he checked it under a microscope, though, he saw no lemon-shaped spores (late blight) but did see lots of nematodes. The nematodes were likely from the soil, brought to the leaf by soil water splash. Their presence reminds us of the diverse array of organisms in an agro-ecosystem.

After admiring the tomatoes for some time, we moved on to the other side of the terraces to have a look at the progress of the rest of the plants. We did make the difficult decision to take the finished pea plants out the garden. Even though peas had been a best-selling item at the farmers market, the plants were finished and it was time to put something else in their place. Once the pea plants and their trellises were removed, sweet potato plants were put into their place. There was some discussion about the difference between yams and sweet potatoes, and some discussion about the taste of sweet potato leaves. The young leaves are high in antioxidants and great in a stir fry.

We then moved onto one of the more unique plants on the terraces, the tobacco plants. The seed for these plants had come into the possession of the department a few years ago and had been planted to not only fill space, but to see how the plants would do up here on the West Coast in a much cooler climate than they have traditionally grown in. They looked like they were doing quite well, as was the next plot of plants we looked at. Although the ground around the already producing peppers was covered in Purslane, we were reminded that this plant was doing a service for us. By aggressively covering the ground, the Purslane was preventing the harder to control grass weeds from getting a grip on the area, saving us precious time that could be devoted to other tasks.

We did look at other parts of the garden, including the then foot-high Sorghum grass we started from seed a few months ago, and much of it looks like it is coming along quite nicely. Some of the lettuces needed replacing, having been harvested from several times, but the rest of the garden needed to be harvested again. Thus, for the farmers market that week we had onions, scallions, lettuce mixes, kale and chard.

On the Thursday class (June 23rd) we went to the Orchard. It has been a while since I have been out in rain like that; our rain gear got a good workout for the few hours it rained. The first order of business was to check some of the traps that had been laid out the week before around the carrots. The traps had been put out to investigate whether there were any Carrot Rust Flies present. Unfortunately, we did find some. However, we did find one very interesting specimen, which we were told had been infected by a beneficial fungus (see the insect at the top left border line of the most central square).

After inspecting and removing the old traps, we got down and dirty (literally) and planted about 120 more strawberry plants in a large double row between the potatoes and the pear trees.

After planting the strawberries, we moved over to the other side of the orchard and planted out a bunch of pumpkin plants, some of which included the hull-less pumpkins that we are doing a research trial with. There were also some squash planted in the same area, all of which were planted at 80 cm apart in 10 rows. The compost that had been spread in class last week in the same location has packed down a bit from the movement over it and the recent rainfall. By planting the pumpkins into the compost, we were hoping to give the pumpkins the best start possible without stressing them too much.

I am super fortunate that my job leads me all over the lower half of BC, allowing me to meet very like-minded people with a passion for preserving agriculture here in the Fraser Valley. Today, I was over in Maple Ridge, where the conversion of farm land into housing developments is happening faster than anywhere else in the province. However, there are still 1,300 farms in Maple Ridge alone, every single one worth protecting. And that was the focus of the “Exploring Ways to Foster Local Sustainable Agriculture in Maple Ridge” event, held on June 9th, and organized by one of my oldest shearing customers, Al Kozak. Al is passionate about protecting agriculture in Maple Ridge, and is a committee member of the City of Maple Ridge Agriculture Advisory committee. For as long as I can remember he has had a small flock of Dorset cross ewes and a big ram, but has also growing garlic for the farmers markets he attends. His commitment and passion for protecting agriculture reminded me that one of my neighbours down the road is involved in the Langley Township Agriculture Advisory committee. And, with a quick google search, I discovered that the City of Richmond has an advisory committee as well. I am curious to know if these committees ever get together and discuss the umbrella issues that affect all those involved in Agriculture here in the Fraser Valley. I would also like to know if there is any way that the students of our department can get involved in these committees or at least attend these meetings. I have attended one Langley Townships AAC meeting and wish I had time to attend more, but I want to get a group of students to go together to any of the AAC meetings that occur here in the Valley and let the committee know that KPU supports agriculture. I will try to remember to bring this up on Thursday when we are out at the orchard to see what others think.

Week 7 (June 14 &16): Transitions...

By Leanne Ejack
KPU AGRI 3390 student


As usual, we started the week off on Tuesday harvesting produce for the weekly Kwantlen Street Farmers Market, which runs every Tuesday from 3-7pm. Not only are we entering the final half of our Agroecosystems class summer semester, we are also transitioning away from our early spring crops, and (soon) entering into our summer crops on the Terraces. This meant that we did not have as much produce to sell at the Market this week as our summer crops are not quite ready yet for harvest. However, we still managed to get a good harvest on all of the lettuce varieties, as well as some kale, Swiss chard, and sugar snap peas.

Our summer crops (eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, etc.) are doing very well. Most of the plants are flowering, and we even have some tiny fruits developing, so harvest of these crops is not too far away!

Tiny eggplant fruits just forming

In last week's post, Masa discussed the importance of sucker pruning on tomato plantings on our indeterminate varieties of tomatoes (i.e. "bush" tomatoes that growing continuously and require staking). This is to open up the canopy for light and air flow in order to help prevent fungal diseases, most notably late blight.

Dr. Aimee Taylor provided a short 'n' sweet run-down on the importance of tomato suckering as she worked on the tomatoes. Video compliments of Stafford Richter.

Dr. Bomford mentioned that he spotted some water-soaked lesions on some of the tomato leaves that he thinks may indicate late blight infection. He put some of these affected leaves in a moist, sealed bag to monitor if a late blight infection develops on these leaves over time. He did mention that he had the same worries last year about late blight on the tomatoes after noticing similar leafy lesions, but late blight never developed. However, that is not a sure bet that the deadly infection won't develop this year, so we must be diligent with our pruning, monitoring, and hygiene (i.e. cleaning clothes and footwear prior to entering the Terrace gardens, cleaning tools, etc).

"Mini-test" for late blight on tomato leaves

Despite the cool, rainy weather at the market this week, we still had a successful day and sold most of what we brought. Despite our summer crops not being quite ready, we still had lots of variety at our market stall with the addition of produce from the Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN) Farm School, as well as the Richmond Farm School incubator farmers.

Anna explains how we grow our produce with a curious customer.

It is always refreshing to talk to customers who are not only interested in our produce, but also curious about the values and approach we take to producing food in the Sustainable Agriculture Program.

 

Grace and Caroline at the Sustainable Agriculture market stall.

Caroline selling a lucky customer some radishes

We are very happy with how successful the new market is at KPU Richmond campus, despite only being a few weeks old. It is only going to get better from here!

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Weeding under an ominous-looking sky

On Thursday we spent the day at the Orchard Gardens. Of course, there was lots of weeding to do around the field crops. Anna was also busy hilling the potatoes.

Anna busy hilling potatoes.

After weeding, we headed over to the site of our soon-to-be pumpkin patch. The soil had just been cultivated again, and was quite compacted. Dr. Taylor gave us a quick field lesson on the conditions that cause compaction, as well as the impact of heavily compacted soil. We dug a few holes in the field to look more closely at the soil layers. We noticed that the hole we dug in the newly-cultivated soil had a structure that Dr. Taylor referred to as "massive". This essentially means that it is almost structure-less. Soil with this type of texture has poor aeration, poor water-holding capacity, and does not effectively hold soil nutrients and make them available to plants. We compared the structure of this soil to a hole we dug in a nearby uncultivated area and noticed that this untouched soil had a much better granular-type structure than the cultivated field.

Looking at the "massive" soil structure in the newly-cultivated field

Granular soil in an undisturbed patch

 

So, what is the best answer to improving soil structure on this new field prior to planting our pumpkins in it....??

Hint: Think of the stuff you throw (or don't throw...tsk tsk!) in the Green Bin!

12 cubic yards of glorious organic matter in the form of Harvest Power compost

Answer: ORGANIC MATTER of course!

The previous day a shipment of about 12 cubic yards of Harvest Power compost (what your Green Bin organic waste is turned in to) had been dumped on the field so that today we could apply it to the 400 square metre field. 

Leanne (above) and Stafford (below) take turns on the tractor.

This also meant that we all got a chance to use the tractor to spread the compost on the field. We all know driving the tractor is the coolest part of the job, so we were all pretty excited to grab a break from weeding to take our turn on the tractor. Thanks to Anna for her "Spreading Compost Using the Tractor Bucket 101" field lesson.

As we were spreading organic matter to try to help improve the soil structure and fertility in our new field, we also discussed similar conventional farmers in the area growing crops like potatoes and corn were also spreading compost on their fields, despite the fact that they are likely still using synthetic fertilizers. It is encouraging to see that farmers from all types of farms are recognizing the importance of organic matter for healthy, sustainable soils. I have noticed this far beyond the boundaries of our little South Richmond farming community. Soil scientists, such as Dr. Christine Jones, are spreading information about the importance of soil health to farmers of all types all over the world - from small organic farmers with a few acres, to large commercial commodity crop growers with hundreds of acres of farmland. Dr. Jones is a highly-respected ground-cover and soils ecologist based in Australia who has organized and been a part of conferences, seminar, workshops, and field days throughout the world, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the U.S., and here in Canada.  

I would highly recommend checking out some of Dr. Jones' writing and work by following the link to her website, "Amazing Carbon" (http://www.amazingcarbon.com/) where you can access some of her articles, interviews, and seminar notes, including this interview from last year in Acres USA® magazine where Dr. Jones discusses the "worldwide challenge of restoring soil carbon and rebuilding topsoil".

Dr. Christine Jones

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!

Temperature monitoring

Two weeks ago, I set out three Kestrel DROP dataloggers in areas growing vegetables on campus. They record temperature, relative humidity, heat index, and dew point at regular intervals. They are currently set to record every 10 minutes, so they have already collected more than 20,000 data points between them!

Free Android or iOS apps give any bluetooth-enabled phone access to the data stored on the devices. The phone needs to be held within three meters of the device to download its data.

Two of the dataloggers are in areas of the campus terrace garden growing cucumbers. One was in a bed with a row cover, and the other is just outside the bed. I removed the row cover on June 6th.

The third datalogger is in our transplant production unit, in KPU's underground parking area.

Here are the temperature readings recorded so far:

Temperature readings from Kestral DROP dataloggers placed in the
transplant production unit below campus (Transplants) and in the campus terrace gardens,
with and without row covers (Cover and No cover, respectively), over the past two weeks.

The outdoor dataloggers have recorded some very high temperatures over the past two weeks. On sunny afternoons, the temperature under the row cover peaked in the high 40s or low 50s, about 10 degrees higher than the temperature without a row cover. The difference between the two outdoor units disappeared on June 6th, when I removed the row cover. Nighttime low temperatures were about the same with, or without, a row cover.

The heat-loving crops growing under the row covers included cucumber, eggplant, sweet sorghum, and peppers. All appeared to thrive despite the high daytime temperatures. I removed the row covers to give pollinators access to the plants once the eggplants and peppers started to flower.

Eggplant flowering

The daily temperature flux was much lower in our transplant production unit than outdoors. Daytime temperatures have been about 6 degrees higher than nighttime temperatures. Temperature tends to rise over the course of each day, and fall over the course of each night. Our transplant production unit is never exposed to sunlight, but includes electric heat mats and fluorescent grow lights on timers set to turn off each night and on each day.

The average temperature in the transplant production unit has increased over the past two weeks, perhaps suggesting that the parking garage has been warming over spring. The parking garage is not climate controlled.

Week 5 - The Kwantlen Street Farmer’s Market Begins!

It’s May 31^st and we are harvesting on the Terrace Garden for the first farmer’s market of the season. The market starts at 3pm and goes till 7pm on Tuesdays so we have to get cracking. We have peas, kale, lettuce, spinach and radishes to harvest, the other crops are not ready yet. 

The kale and salad bowl lettuce before we started.

Masa, Johanna and I started by picking peas and filled sixteen 200g bags. They were really sweet and were the first item to sell out of at the market.

There is a lot to consider when harvesting, it’s not just pick and go to the market. After you pick you need to wash and keep cool the product (we used ice), try to make sure you don't put in any unwanted organisms in with the produce,

weigh and bundle the produce,

and record how much you harvested, how much are you going to sell the produce for and how you are going to display it so it looks good but doesn’t get too hot and wilt.

After sections were harvested Stafford went through and prepared the beds for new transplants or seeding.

Mike got two temperature sensors that work with an app call Kestrel, one is under a row cover the other is not and they track the temperatures on a continues bases. It was interesting to learn that it was about 9 degrees C warmer under the row cover.

On Thursday, June 2nd we were at the Orchard weeding. While weeding we noticed that we had very little emergence of a lot of the seeds we had planted. We are not sure why and will have to reseed some of the beds. The 'Flamingo Pink' Swiss chard row is going to be plowed under because it hardly came up at all and had a lot of weeds. We will start again maybe something different this time.

After the weeding was done we looked at the pear orchard, and Rebecca told us about a orchard floor management system called the “Swiss sandwich system” where the tree rows have one type of cover or possibly left bare and the area between the rows is a different cover, usually grass and a bare strip is maintained between the two so the grass does not grow into the tree rows.

Anna tilled in the grass around the trees.

A Whole Different World Goes on in the Garden That We Rarely Notice

I find it interesting learning about all the different organisms that live within the garden, some we can see and some we cannot. We tend to call them pests and beneficials. Scientists know very little about the micro organisms that live in soil and are realizing how important they are to the health of the soil and the plants, such as the mycorrhizae symbiotic relationship between certain fungi and plant roots where the fungi helps the plant with nutrient and water uptake and, in exchange, the fungi receive sugars produced by the plant. We have herbivores and carnivores just as we do with larger animals. The herbivores tend to be the pests and the carnivores tend to be the beneficials. Cabbage moth (which is actually a butterfly) can be a beneficial when it is an adult because it help pollinate but in the larval stage it feeds on our crops.

In the next picture there are black aphids in the center of the leaf and the fly to the outside is dead because of Entomophthora muscae a pathogenic fungus which is a potential biological pest control. Aphids are a pest because they pierce the plant and suck out its sap, but more importantly they can transmit diseases to the plant. 

There are predators in the garden, one that most of us know is the Lady Beetle.

I also found a stink bug or green soldier bug that is a pest of seeds, grains, nuts and fruits.

We now know that too much antibiotic use is bad for us in that it kills not just the bad bacteria but the good bacteria as well, and we are getting antibiotic resistant bad bacteria. The same is true for pesticide use, we are not just killing the pests but the beneficials also. Some pests are becoming resistant as well. We also understand the predator-prey relationship, or the "Lotka Volterra" hypothesis, predicting that predators are less numerous than prey (herbivores). The prey usually reproduce in large numbers and some more than once a year (some like aphids almost continually). So when you use an insecticide, for example, you kill all the insects and the pest insects are going to rebound first creating a bigger problem until the predator insects rebound. So it makes sense to learn about the life cycles of the organisms in your garden and soil and try to maintain a reasonable balance between pests and beneficials instead of using pesticides. You can also encourage beneficials to your garden by providing suitable habitat and water for them. This creates a more sustainable system that is healthier for all of us.