Lettuce Love

Spring Equinox is approaching, and I have a vivid memory of celebrating this day last year lying in the luscious grass in my front yard, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and feeling the warmth of the sun on my bare skin. Fast forward a year, and the thought of lying on the ground without my jacket, hat and scarf is an uncomfortable one.

The weather has been quite different this year, it’s taking a while for the ground to warm up, and that’s having a huge impact on farmers. We started out the class by discussing the nitrogen predicament we are in: students had planted clover as a cover crop on the terraces. The more the clover grows, the more nitrogen it fixes, and when it’s biomass is incorporated back into the soil before the growing season, we will have lots of available nitrogen for this year’s crops to take up. However, with the bizarre amount of snow and cold weather we’ve been experiencing, the clover didn’t do so hot. Consequently, not much nitrogen was fixed and there is not much biomass to incorporate back into the soil. A nitrogen deficiency can be a big problem for farmers, as it results in poor plant growth.

A photo from Mike’s PowerPoint presentation of  what the clover looked like this time last year on the terraces, with someone weed whacking it. 

A photo I took on the terraces this year - no weed whacking necessary!

So what were our options?

1.       We could apply compost tea. However, it is treated as raw manure and we would be unable to use edible crops within 120 days of application, so this did not seem like a promising option.

2.       Applying manure increase nitrogen in the soil, however this would have needed to be done last year, and we didn’t because we thought the cover crop was a better option.

3.       Since our terraces not certified organic, we could also apply synthetic fertilizers that increase available nitrogen.

This is an interesting option to consider. As sustainable agriculture students, many of us would agree that synthetic fertilizers are not a great option as they damage the natural make up of the soil and can have negative effects on beneficial microorganisms in the soil. However, this is a moral predicament that many farmers can find themselves in; knowing that one thing is more sustainable for environmental well-being, while another is more sustainable for financial well-being. With our first market date being in 3 weeks, the pressure is on to have crops ready! It’s an interesting dilemma, how the pressure of a land to be productive greatly influences how we may treat it. Near the beginning of our degree at KPU, we were taught the 3 pillars of sustainability; (1) environmental protection (2) economic development and (3) social development. So, when making decisions such as what to do about nitrogen deficient crops, it is important to consider how each of these branches would be affected to make a well-rounded decision.

4.       We could plant peas! There are gulls of bacteria that live symbiotically on the roots of peas. These bacteria fix nitrogen in the soil to make it more readily available for plant uptake.

And that is what we did! First, we had to inoculate the pea seeds with a rhizobia, which help the pea plants to grow. Rhizobia are naturally occurring bacteria in the soil, but if peas haven’t been planted there is the last decade, then there won’t be the type of rhizobia there that the peas need, or that we need to fix the nitrogen for us. 

Package of the rhizobia inoculant we used.

While a few of us were inoculating the pea seeds, the rest of the class was applying compost to the terraces. A pick-up truck loaded with fresh compost from Harvest Power was parked near by. The compost was still quite hot and steamy when it arrived, but fortunately the crisp air helped it cool off as we applied it.

Compost!

Unloading compost

Spreading steamy compost

Eric and Piper adorably planting pea seeds.

Once we were finished with compost and peas, we started to prepare rows to transplant lettuce and kale in. Yay for me, as transplanting lettuce is strangely one of my favourite things to do. I find it incredibly magical to dig a little home in the soil for one of the most fragile looking plants in it’s infancy, shake up it’s roots a little bit, and then fill in it’s surroundings with soil, presence, and love so it may feel safe and supported in it’s new, vast home. Our every little action in these moments affect the quality of life this vulnerable salad green will have; how deep we dig the hole, how close it is to other plants, how loose or constrained we leave its roots, and how much we compact the soil around it’s little stem. 

Eric giving new homes to baby lettuces.

The other magical thing about transplanting lettuce, is I always seem to have the best life chats with fellow peers and farmers gathered around our baby salad greens. And this day was no exception. A peer and I got to chatting about how many indigenous cultures have ceremonies around planting. For example, in a Blessing of the Land Ceremony, Mayans would ask Mother Earth and the Creator to bless the seeds and for permission in breaking the land to plant them.

Interestingly, the topic of ceremony I agriculture has been showing up a lot around me recently. At the COABC conference, which myself and some other fellow students attended, got the privilege to listen to the keynote speaker, who was of First Nations lineage, and he also spoke about bringing ceremony to agriculture. He spoke about the difference between having a planting “party” and a planting “ceremony” in which the latter simply involves more intention in developing a relationship to what we are celebrating. To him, a planting “ceremony” involves an understanding of the commitment we are making to a vulnerable seed as we are planting it. Our intention is that we are going to take care of it, through whatever weather arises, to the best of our abilities. Ceremony invites us to remember that sentiment, communicate it to the plant, and consequently form a stronger relationship with it. In the end, we eat that plant, it feeds our cells, it’s nutrients become ours, and it gives back to us all the nourishment we gave to it. Through this lens, the act of transplanting lettuce can become quite a magical experience indeed.  

And so, I tried to keep Nicholas Peterson’s (the keynote speaker) wisdom in mind as I puttered along the terrace beds, communicating to each bunch of little green leaves that I committed to supporting them to the best of my ability on their journey to a fully grown, edible lettuce head.

The next tray in line to be transplanted was named Drunken Woman. Continuing our deep and meaningful lettuce conversations, I turned to one of my peers and asked, “why do you think it’s named Drunken Woman?!” We concluded that it’s probably because it has a wild, curvy, feminine appearance to it – seems reasonable. We proceeded to plant each plug into the ground, and I made sure to send my love and support to each of the Drunken Woman...