Someone dripped the ball on the irrigation!?

May 23^rd, 2017 was our third Kwantlen St. Farmers Market of the year. This one was particularly hot with an afternoon high of 23°C. Before harvest and processing took place the class followed Mike and Rebecca through our weekly walkabout to assess the state of the terrace gardens. Unfortunately, the terrace irrigation system did not get turned on the previous Friday; however, everything made it through the weekend with no serious fatalities. Lettuce praise the water-holding capacity of organic matter for this! Besides the irrigation hiccup we observed the following:

·      The peas were beginning to flower.

·      The carrot transplants were dying.

·      Newly emerging sunflowers could potentially shade the emerging Dyers Matter.

·      There were a number of hoverflies around the lettuce crop.

·      There were a small number of cabbageworms on the upper terrace kale crop.

·      The newly transplanted tomato plants that were not doing well have successfully rooted.

Agroecosystems class on our weekly walkabout.

Although the recent seasonal change towards warm temperatures has been much more enjoyable to work in, the consistently warm temperatures have spurred quick growth in many of our leafy green crops. Due to these increases in growth, it was important for all of the students to do a thorough taste test of all of our greens to ensure that they were not too bitter for sale. After doing a taste test of all the greens we concluded that while the Merlot lettuce was far to bitter to be sold on it’s own, and the other leafy greens were good enough for one more harvest. This meant that the ‘cut and come again’ crops of leafy greens would be cut to the ground and re-seeded. Much like the leafy greens, many of the radishes had increased in growth, becoming tasteless and woody. The last of the radishes were harvested and the area was re-seeded.

Dr. Mike Bomford doing a lettuce taste test.

Although this was our third time harvesting and processing our terrace garden crops for the market, I feel as though our class is still figuring out how to efficiently harvest and process the crops smoothly. During the processing there was clearly a bottleneck caused by a build up of harvested produce with nowhere to go because the harvested produce was using up all of the bin space. Once the produce was weighed, washed, and bagged, our market stand was set-up and we were ready for market sales. Our market stand was looking particularly vibrant because of our first harvest of scallions.

A magnificent bin pyramid.

The first scallion harvest of the season.

During lunch we did our weekly Tool-Time and Web of Life presentations. Piper’s Tool-Time presentation focused on the subsoiler. The subsoiler is a tractor-mounted implement that is often used for deep tillage, allowing farmers to loosen and break up soils at depths that cannot be worked by the standard surface tiller. The subsoiler is essentially made of multiple blades that are pulled behind the tractor reaching soil depths of up to 30cm. Emily M’s Web of Life presentation focused on Wolbachia spp. Wolbachia spp. is a genus of bacteria which infects arthropod species, including insects and nematodes. It is one of the most common parasitic microbes in the world. Wolbachia spp. has the ability to alter the reproductive success of their arthropod hosts. This ability is increasingly being considered as a potential method for biocontrol programs.   

Tool time with Piper.

As the day came to an end we began cleaning up and I was shown how to add the days collected data to our new and improved shared data system. Once the data was collected we decided to turn our irrigation lines on to ensure that all of the lines were free of leaks. Unfortunately, there were a number of irrigation lines that began spouting water. Leaks were marked with colored tape, before the lines were shut off, enabling us to know where they must be fixed. Thus, started the week when someone dripped the ball on the irrigation.