The Week # 9 Rundown (Tuesday June 28th and Thursday June 30th)

Tuesday June 28th: @ The KPU Richmond Campus Terrace Gardens Site Maintenance and Preparation for the Kwantlen Street Market.

Professor Bomford discussing the pertinent issues that we need to tackle and address during our three hour class

The pre-work tour and site survey. In this snapshot, Professor Bomford is identifying problems with spotty germination, located in some of the terrace garden plots. 

Professor Bomford discussing the reasons for spotty germination of beets and carrots; they were directly sown by hand last week and a few weeks prior to that.  

Masa applying anti-fungal organic pesticide to suppress the development of early onset powdery mildew in our cucurbits.

Myself (Stafford Richter) continuing the ongoing process of weaving twine between the Tomato trellis posts. This activity is undertaken to provide the tomato plants with additional support, as fruit set continues and we transition from spring into summer. Summer is peak season for outdoor tomato production.

Professor Aimee Taylor,  in this photo she is attending to the Tomato jungle in the upper terrace gardens. These gentle giants now need to be pruned every fortnight to stop the crossing of shoots between plants. The other benefit of these ongoing haircuts, that provide our tomato plants with, is to open up the tomato canopy to sunlight to encourage the ripening of tomato fruit. Lastly, this pruning activity is a preventative measure; it's designed to slow down the spread of blight between tomatoes. Knock on wood, that they we as a class, do not encounter this problem.

Harvest bins drying outside under the mid-day heat, this picture was taken near the end of class.

"Please Don't Eat Our Student Projects,"  reads the lettering on the very Canadian placard sign; we are trying to deter theft. Ironically, there have been fewer incidences of theft this season as compared to last. 

These corn plants were planted on approximately Tuesday June 21st and according to Professor Bomford, we should be astounded to see their rapid rate of growth.  These corn starts that were transplanted into AB1 Block at the Gilbert Road Orchard Site to replace the corn seed that failed to germinate. 

Masa removing the floating row cover, that has covered the sweet potato cuttings that were cultivated by Professor Bomford and planted on Tuesday June 21st. Unfortunately for us, we baked the majority of the cuttings under the heat of the row covers. Professor Bomford, is confident that the below ground root tissue ill regenerate and produce shoots again; we await to see the results of this hypothesis. 

Professor Bomford demonstrating how to properly preserve floating row cover from season to season by weaving it into a braid pattern. I would be wise to heed his advice; in my two previous seasons of market gardening in Langley Township, my partners and I used 900' rolls of medium weight row cover. This was done at a cost of roughly $300 per roll.

Professor Harbut diligently working to remove accumulated field heat from the mixed greens harvested from the KPU Richmond Terrace Gardens.  She first bathes the cut lettuce greens in cold water, before putting them through a large commercial sized kitchen sized salad spinner. Next, she bags the lettuce greens, bunches green onions and kale and then places them over ice in reusable rubbermaid tubs. She is sheltered from the heat, underneath the cover of a large deciduous tree, nearest to the cafeteria. 

My classmate Kathy, is harvesting lettuce greens by hand. She then places the cut greens into a cold water bathe, thankfully she is working in the cover of the shade. I was the unlikely recipient of a sunburn last Tuesday.

Professor Harbut extolling the virtues of our produce, that is grown using organic methods, to a prospective customer at the Kwantlen Street Market. The market happens in the KPU Richmond Campus parking lot.  Last Tuesday was the official Grand Opening for the Kwantlen Street Market after three weeks of soft-opening events.

Local dignitaries from the community and the university administration are seen here celebrating with a photo-op, it is the official opening of the new Kwantlen Street Market. You can see KPU President Allan Davis in the centre of the group. This farmer's market runs every Tuesday afternoon from 3PM until 7PM. The market will continue into the fall; the last market day occurs on Tuesday October 18th. 

Professor Kent Mullinix, founder of the applied Bsc in Sustainable Agriculture program addressed the crowd at the start of the Kwantlen Street Market. In the video you can listen to him thanking Alex McGowan, the KSA President. It was the student union whom supplied: organizational, logistical and financial support needed to establish this weekly farmer's market.

Thursday June 30th: @ The Gilbert Road Orchard Site

The flowers of potato plants located in planting block AB2 are now in full bloom.  Professor Harbut pointed out to me, that this signals the formation of tubers beneath the soil. Next the flowers will begin to wither, which means that the tubers have been fully formed and can be dug up and sold at the Kwantlen Street Market.

Professor Rebecca Harbut stands beside Research and Education Farm Coordinator Anna Rawlings, surveying the damage caused by the unexpected water mainline explosion. Anna Rawling, went to turn on he water to the whole field, water began to bubble up from the ground. The area of this miniature water geyser was located right behind the corn transplants.

Pole beans to the left and corn seedlings to the right. The corn seedlings are visible in this image and are the sole survivors from the corn that was directly planted at the end of May. These corn plants, were dug up and transplanted into this row by hand, before the block was tilled under to prepare for the application and integration of the Enterra Natural Fertilizer product. To the right of the corn plants, you can see the red flags delineating the perimeter of both the experimental and control plots. These test plots will be monitored during the wireworm suppression study initiated by Professor Bomford this past week at the Gilbert Road Orchard. 

Hand-weeding as a group. When you operate a small-scale market garden, as we are doing as a class, at the KPU Richmond Campus Gardens and secondarily at the Gilbert Road Orchard near the Dyke in Steveston is sometimes laborious. Some things are unavoidable at a small production scale, like hand weeding. We planted these bush beans about three and a half weeks ago and as you can see in the image above, they are being choked out by competing pressure from perennial weeds. It was a slow going process that took a rotating group of three the duration of our three hour class but the bulk of the weeding in this block is now down.  

Wireworm Suppression study in corn patch in planting block AB1

Figure # 1: Spring 2016's Agro-Ecosystems Level II ENF wireworm suppression study. This study is based upon the work of sustainable agriculture student Sami Abdul's similar experiment conducted last summer,  also at the Gilbert Road Orchard site in Richmond, BC. 

Figure # 2: Sami Adbul's Experimental Design Plot Summer 2015 at the Gilbert Road Orchard in AB2 Block; comparing the ENF v. DSM to control endemic wireworm populations in Winter Wheat cover-crop.

Figure # 3: Temple et. al 2013 Field Trial Study of the "nutrient dynamics in relatively low fertility soil" a side by side comparison of Enterra Natural Fertilizer (ENF), Worm Castings (WC), Composted Poultry Litter (CPL) vs. the control, no fertilizer application.  Experimental Design Layout and research was carried out at Amara Farm in Courtenay, BC

In the orchard plots, specifically AB 1 and AB 2 we have an ongoing problem with wireworms, the juvenile pupal form of the mature click beetles Coleoptera Elateridae. There are an estimated 9000 species of wireworm on the Earth, with 20 different species of wireworm destroying tuber crops across Canada. Their meal of choice is potatoes, but they aren't too discerning and will feast upon everything from grain crops to tobacco plants (Vickerson et. al 2015, para 006).

Third year students must first complete a basic statistics class in order to understand how statistical methods are both determined and applied in research projects. After completing this introductory course, successful agriculture students must then enrole in the Experimental Design class. The objective of this class is to create and design their own experimental study. Senior 4th year student Abdul Sami, originally from Afghanistan, became curious about wireworms and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) options available to kill them.

Adbul, observed that conventional methods of using synthetic pesticides was a non-sustainable management solution to kill resident larva populations; therefore Abdul Sami, reviewed the existing body of literature on wireworm management techniques. Doing so he was lead to believe that there were two suitable organic management techniques that he could further investigate.

The first option was to find and use  rapeseed meal.  It is sold commercially as Defatted Seed Meal (DSM). This would later prove to be a problematic solution; as Professor Bomford would discover, the source of canola, the primary ingredient in DSM was likely GMO.  As it turns out, it is very difficult to source organic canola in 2016; it is an open-pollinated crop and is planted at such a large scale, in the Canadian prairie provinces that it makes sourcing a legitimately organic crop of canola difficult, if not impossible.  Having determined DSM, as his first wireworm control method, Adbul Sami and Professor Michael Bomford were next able to approach local agricultural company Enterra Feed Corporation. They sought some Black Solider Fly (BSF) frass for use in their  study.


The BSF, Hermetia illucens is a large fly native to the tropics and South America. The feces of the BSF are called Frass. It has been demonstrated through peer reviewed studies, that Frass makes both an effective fertilizer, with an NPK content of 3-2-4 and also an organic insecticide (Vickerson et. al, 2015) (Enterra Feed Corporation, 2016).  This frass or digestate [in layman's terms the poop of the BSF larva] is exceedingly nutrient dense and has the advantage of a low C:N ratio. This allows plants to uptake nutrients in soil solution very quickly, compared to other leading organic fertilizers. The process of soil absorbing nutrients from fertilizers and then translocating these nutrients, to plants through their network of fibrous roots, helps plants, to uptake nutrients when the soil is saturated with water. We call this process mineralization (Enterra Feed Corporation, 2016).

A 2013 study carried out on Vancouver Island conducted by Temple et. al at the Amara Farm in Courtenay had one main objective; it sought to compare the efficacy of mineralization obtained from Enterra Natural Fertilizer (ENF) against two other comparable organic fertilizer products. The farming site used in the experiment was of marginal agricultural to provide a better contrast for the success or failure rate of each fertilizer option. The ENF was compared against composted poultry litter (EPL) and worm castings (WC) in three different trials and the results were pretty clear cut; ENF's rate of N mineralization was 60% greater than either CPL or WC (Temple et. al, 2013). Not only was nitrogen mineralized at a greater rate than occurred in the two other competing organic fertilizer products, so too was phosphorous and potassium minerals.

 In the main field study, of most relevance to Abdul Sami and by our extension our Agro-ecosystems class are the three rates of ENF and how they were applied in 1.2 m x 1.5 m test plots at a low rate of 5 t/ha or a high rate of 10 t/ha in comparison to control plots which received no ENF application. The ENF treatments were applied and incorporated at a depth of 15 cm, plots were then levelled off with shovels and rakes and covered with jute coffee sacks and left for two weeks to for mineralization to occur (Temple et. al, 2013, 4). In Addul Sami's trial, four replicates and three treatments were used, the control where neither DSM or ENF were applied and incorporated into the soil. Each plot that received an application of either DSM or ENF was 2m wide by 5 m long, secondly ENF which was applied at a rate of 7 t/ha and lastly the DSM which was applied and worked into the soil at an application of rate of 6 t/ha (Sami 2015)

There were two major take-away lessons from the Temple et. al study in 2013 that were relevant to Abdul Sami's research which provided the foundations for our latest study, which we set up just this past Thursday at the Gilbert Road Market Garden site. Firstly, the rate of mineralization of the ENF is slow burning, "by day 56 [after application and incorporation] for the ENF was still increasing, whereas the nitrogen levels of the other fertilizers had levelled off (Temple et. al, 2013)." Extrapolating this line of thinking, we can take this as incidental evidence of the latency of the fertilizer product and its corroborating role as an organic insecticide meant to repel and kill resident wireworm populations in an agricultural field of study.

The second take away from the Temple et. al study is the correlation between high EC (Electrical Conductivity) and sodium content, greater than either WC or CPL. Okay, so at does this mean, you may ask? Well, to break things down, we will firstly need to explain the role of assessing EC in your soil as a farmer. EC will give you a snapshot of the water in your soils ability to carry an electrical current, remember that all nutrients absorbed in soil solution are taken up by plants roots in ionic form as either cations or anions. Therefore a healthy soil, will be able to carry an ample electrical charge according to research conducted out of Clemson University, the article I read online went on to explain that an ideal EC level in soil solution is between 200 uS/cm and 1200 uS/cm.
We can deduce soil health problems if EC levels fall either above 1200 uS/cm or below 200 uS/cm.
ENF in some field studies has problematically tested too high in EC content s problematically had to as a result of high sodium content.

High sodium content in the composition of ENF can show evidence of over application causing salinization in the soil. Salinization is a four-letter word among farmers because it contributes to immobilization of nutrients in soil rather than their release to nearby plants. According to Reed Radley, head scientist at Enterra Feed Corporation and co-author of the Temple et. al study, steps have been taken to limit or prevent incidents of salinization caused by over-application of ENF. They now request that growers assess their existing NPK levels in soil before applying ENF, if the soil shows evidence of pre-existing nitrogen freely available in the soil, they request that the grower reduce the amount of frass applied and incorporated into the soil to reduce the incidences of soil sterility and on the production end they have streamlined this process by relying on: "the same feedstock suppliers, and trying to maintain variety in the input feedstock to even out feedstock quality, and hence stabilize the frass numbers (Radley, email correspondence, 2016)".

Herein lies an applicable takeaway from Radley's e-mail explanation to myself, perhaps it is the sodium load causing isolated incidences of increased soil salinity create a toxic environment for which the wireworm can no longer survive and as a result die off. In Enterra's patent application for it's ENF product, chief technology officer states that: "the frass may be applied at a rate of at least 5 tonnes per hectare, for example at a rate that kills at least 50% of the insect pest. (Vickerson et. al, 2015)". Regardless of the cause of toxicity caused by application and incorporation of ENF Abdul Sami choose to apply at a rate of 7 tonnes per hectare.

The other key thing Abdul Sami did in constructing the methodology of his study was comparing existing wireworm populations to those after incorporation and mineralization of both the ENF  and DSM products. In the discussion section of his report, Sami concludes the following: "wireworms were seven times more abdundant in control plots than DSM plots and four times more abundant in control plots than ENF plots" (Abdul, 2015 p. 10). He concludes that their was a key limiting factor in his study scale, he says that the trial should be replicated at a larger size and with larger buffers between plots. This is where the Spring 2016 Agro-Ecosystem II's class involvement comes into play.


We have essentially replicated Abdul Sami's study in a larger spatial area, relocating his space of study from AB2 block to AB1, where the crop under observation is now corn instead of winter wheat. As we are only using one variable ENF, instead of ENF and DSM, there is little need for a 1 m buffer between test plots.

Our study was conducted on a 150 square meter corn field, divided into eight plots, measuring 19 square meters each (5 metres in width x 3.75 metres in length). We applied 21 kg of ENF to each of four plots, leaving the remaining four plots untreated in  randomized complete block design. The application rate was 11 t/ha (21 kg / 19 square meters x 1 t / 1,000 kg x 10,000 square meters / ha).

Our class did not sample for wireworms before applying and incorporating the ENF into the soil of AB1 test plots. I will bring up the methodology for sampling wireworm populations over the lifecycle of the corn transplants (likely the next two months) and how we can record and compare data over the next few weeks. Additionally we need to consider that unlike the Temple et. al study we did not allow mineralization of the ENF to occur in a covered environment for two weeks before transplanting our corn starts, they were becoming root bound and this was not an option for us. It will be very interesting to see how this study progresses over the coming weeks. I can honestly say, that it has gotten me to feel excited about the scientific method and data collection in general. This is a shocking revelation for me to offer up because I am more interested in the practical hard-nosed business of agriculture, meaning putting shovels in the soil and what not. Perhaps, this experiment will change my point of view, time will tell.

Anna Rawlings tilling in the weeds which have overtaken AB1 planting block, this would have taken forever by hand even with a half-dozen student and teacher farmhands to assist. 

Anna Rawlings' triumphantly finishing tilling in the weeds of planting block AB 1 prior to hand spreading of the ENF.  The previously spotty germination rate of corn lead to a niche vacancy which weedy plant species were more than happy to infiltrate and occupy.

Erecting and marking off the study area in planting block AB1 

What the ENF looks like spread out over the soil in experimental area of planting block AB1. Instead of incorporating by hand with a pitchfork to a depth of 4 " as recommended by Reed Radley of Enterra Feed Corporation, we expedited the process by having Anna Rawlings till the soil surface again (see image below)

Professor Michael Bomford explain the proper technique for removing a corn seed plug from a 72 cell tray, we had about 1000 plugs to transplant last Thursday afternoon. 

Student Leanne Ejack, removes corn plugs with the blunt end of # 2 HB pencil and gives them to Professor Bomford whom plants them in the ground at 12' intervals in parallel rows. 

Our class attempt at the Ford assembly line model of corn transplanting.

Leanne Ejack and Professor Bomford transplanting more corn seedlings, when will it end?

Me (Stafford Richter) excitedly pumping my fists in the area after completing the transplanting of another row of corn transplants. 

The finished result! What a feeling of victory as Professor Bomford snaps this picture at ground level showing what the completed experimental block AB1 looks like, now with 1000 new corn transplants therein and the irrigation drip-tape re-connected. 

One of the other tasks for our Thursday at the Gilbert Road Orchard was laying down and staking down this landscape fabric to suppress the growth of weeds in between rows in the cucurbit planting block nearest to the Incubator farmer plots on the far side of the orchard. Ideally it will reduce the amount of weeding that needs to be completed in this planting block over the rest of the summer and into the fall. 

Works Cited:

Sami, Abdul, December 2015. The use of Canola Seed Meal and Enlltruterra Natural Fertilizer for Controlling Wireworm. Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems.

Agricultural Solutions,  n.d. The why and how to testing the Electrical Conductivity of Soils. https://www.agriculturesolutions.com/resources/92-the-why-and-how-to-testing-the-electrical-conductivity-of-soils

Enterra Feed Corporation, 2016. Natural Fertilizer. http://www.enterrafeed.com/products/natural-fertilizer/

Sheppard, D.C J.K.; J.K. Tomberlin, J.A. Joyce, B.C. Kiser & S.M. Sumner.

2002. Rearing Methods for the Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae). J.

Med. Entomol. 39(4): 695-698

Temple, D.W., R. Radley, Baker-French. and Richardson F. November 2013.  Use of Enterra Natural Fertilizer (Black Soldier Fly Larvae Digestate) As a Soil Ammendment. http://www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/programs/osdp/I-172_Frass_Research_Final%20Report.pdf

Vickerson, A, R. Radley, B. Marchant, O. Kaulfuss & T. Kabaluk February 2015. Hermetica illucens frass production and use in plant nutrition and pest management. http://www.google.com/patents/WO2015013826A1?cl=en

E-mail Correspondence. Monday July 4th 2016. Stafford Richter and Reed Radley.