A New Journey Begins!

After a long hard winter break spent snuggled up to a fire counting seeds (that’s what all agriculturalists do, FYI), it wasn’t imaginable that we Aggies might venture out into the cold for our first Agroecosystem lab of the semester. Luckily, Ron Burgundy arrived on the scene with his conch to send out the call.

Ron Burgundy, awakening the Aggies from their winter slumber

Aggies assembling at KPU Richmond

The instinct of the Aggies was strong. Students and instructors arrived on time in near perfect attendance on the back steps of the KPU Richmond campus. Off we carpooled to check out the research orchard and freeze our toes off while pruning. Despite the cold, I was keen to get started on our year long interactive Agroecosystem course series, and I'm sure many other students were as well. We put in countless classroom hours to get this far, and now its time to go outside and plant! ... (in every sense of the word)

It was so cold this Aggy rendered 
themselves completely unidentifiable.

Before turning our attention to the fruit trees, instructors Mike and Rebecca gave us the low down on current research that’s happening in the fields and in the orchard. One of the neat things going on right now is a trial intercropping of potato and wheat. The goal is to evaluate if the wheat can effectively attract wireworms (which are rampant) away from the potatoes (which wireworms are famous for devouring). If all goes according to plan, we will be making unblemished French fries in a few months. If it doesn’t work out so well, we will have to resort to mashed potatoes. What a terrible shame that would be!

Instructors Mike and Rebecca giving 
students a tour of the research farm

After the mini tour we proceeded to mozy around the orchard taking stock of our situation. Last year’s Agroecosystem class was fairly small and didn’t quite get all the work done that they wanted to. This year we have a sizeable class (14 students), so we hope to catch up on any pruning that was missed last year.

7-year-old Crimson Pear trees. Some had to be 
replanted after getting girdled by rodents

We soon settled down in the Crimson Pear section of the orchard. Kent started his demonstration with a reminder of what we need to keep top of mind in order to accomplish our goals. Wikipedia’s Fruit tree pruning page offers some good background for novice pruners, as does this briefing from Oregon State University. Kent warned us that different types of tree fruit (apples and pears vs stone fruits like cherries and peaches) can have vastly different requirements. Even among pear trees, different rootstocks and fruit cultivars may require different pruning methods. Generally speaking though, when we are pruning fruit trees that are not yet mature we are establishing shape and fruiting branches for future years, keeping an appropriate number of fruiting branches for this year, and maintaining a balance between reproductive growth (fruit) and vegetative growth (wood). Pruning during winter dormancy will stimulate vegetative growth and consequently reduce reproductive growth in our pear trees. That is okay at this stage of the tree's life, as we are still establishing shape, size, and are encouraging them to fill the space they were given at planting time. Once the trees have matured our pruning strategy will switch to maintaining shape, renewing old fruiting wood and a greater focus will be put on reproductive growth so we can maximize the number of fruit pies, cider jugs and all manner of other wonderful and delicious things that can be imagined. 

Kent (left) explaining how we can ‘fill space’ by 
positioning tree branches while we prune

The trees we are working with are 7 years old, but given their current size and fruit yield seem to be a bit behind schedule. This can be explained by our location and climate - our soils are not ideal for growing tree fruit (the water table is high and they don’t like having wet roots), there isn't quite enough heat in a typical Richmond summer, and the often strong winds coming off the water don’t help either. Since our trees are not mature yet we are still focusing on expanding and shaping the canopy. Although they have gotten off to a slow start, Kent estimates their vigour is generally good and we should expect our first bumper crop this summer. Exciting!

The ground is littered with wood from Kent’s 
prune job

Check out that briefing I mentioned from OSU for an overview of several different types of ‘Tree Forms’ (page 4). In our case, we are pruning for a multiple leader form, which involves training into a ‘goblet’ shape with an open centre. The theoretical ideal is to have our trees fill their allotted space in the orchard while allowing light to penetrate evenly to all branches without shading out other trees. This will maximize fruit quality. As you can (hopefully) see in the before and after photos, Kent cut quite a bit of wood off in order to encourage good form in this particular tree.

Before and after shots of Kent’s demo pear tree

This tree has been pruned to

multiple leaders. Notice the 
‘goblet’ shape and open 
centre.

Doing is learning, and so after Kent’s demo the students grabbed a partner, a pair of pruners and chose a tree. Stark and I picked a fairly prominent tree (second tree in the first row) so we could easily return and observe our handy work in the future. I have to admit - knowing how much was on the line made each and every cut daunting. The choice of tree variety, the rootstock that it grows on, the amendments and cover crops in the soil, all the pruning that has been carefully made by years of growers, the selection of leading branches and more are all in your hands as you try not to mess up what everyone has had in mind for this tree's future. With this existential burden weighing heavily on our shoulders we very judiciously made cuts and debated what our best possible moves were. In the mean time, Kent coolly strolled the orchard clipping as though he hadn’t a care in the world. 

We started by identifying the three main leader branches, finding out where the ‘centre’ was, and slowly removing branches we were confident we didn’t need. We quickly found the ‘theoretical ideal’ we had come to know in past discussions was far from our reality - but don't worry - we were able to assure ourselves we were making the best of our situation. We were able to open up the centre, thin out crowded areas and make heading cuts to stimulate localize vegetative growth in desirable areas, as Kent had advised. With a little guidance from our instructors we worked our way through some of the more difficult decisions – like choosing the tree’s height. You can see what we ended up with in our before and after photos. Like Kent, we also ended up taking off a lot of wood.

Before and after shots of the tree Stark and I worked on. As you can see, its going to

take some years of careful pruning before the goblet shape fully forms

Overall I thought it was a great morning in the orchard and I look foreword to continuing to build my experience pruning trees. For me, it’s very unique and intriguing to consider the thought of maintaining a long-term relationship with an organism that is less than super animate. With humans, dogs and even horses I have found communicating and understanding one another is fairly intuitive. Through the use of our voices and body language, along with careful attention to detail, we can arrive at a mutual understanding of each others needs and desires and develop a relationship based on shared terms. Information is quite forthcoming from those we interact with and the feedback is often instantaneous.

Such is not the case with a fruit tree. With a fruit tree, the grower must be completely tuned in to how the tree is responding and predict how it is likely to respond to continued stimulus. Lack of vigilance could easily result in misreading a situation or repeating mistakes. Consequences can range anywhere from one unproductive tree to seriously crippling an entire orchard. In order to optimize the relationship between fruit tree and human, the grower needs to bring knowledge and understanding of the organism as well as the environment it is living in to the table. Attention to detail must be stretched out over long periods of time... patience and persistence must be practiced. The upside is once you understand your context and you partner organism, you have the opportunity to tell it what to do, and it will do fruit for you by the bunches. A skilled and knowledgable grower can more or less dictate the terms of the relationship (within the biological capacity of the organism, which we are also manipulating through various means such as rootstocks). Once you understand a tree's tendencies and environment you can make commands over the years and have it fulfil your desires, wether they be cherry pie, apple strudel, dancing sugar plums or a delicious savoury fruit concoction. 

Aggies happily at play in the orchard

We humans have spent hundreds, if not thousands of years selecting genes for our cultivars, improving pruning techniques, breeding rootstocks to control tree size and experimenting with training systems and heat capture mechanisms like fruit walls. There has never been more knowledge available or more tools at our disposal to tell the tree what to do and get what we want from it. Now more then ever our orchards are a reflection of ourselves. Are we focused on high economic return? There is a rootstock/cultivar/nutrient/canopy management regime for that. Are we interested in maintaining varieties with interesting flavour and other characteristics, despite being uneconomic at an industrial scale? There is an entirely different system required for that, and it is going to look completely different compared to an industrial system. But unless you have trees of your own you are going to have to peruse the farmers markets and backyards of hobby orchardists to find those unique flavours and colours. We just don't plant, prune or grow near infinite varieties of fruits like we used to, for better or for worse. If you need convincing that loss of genetic diversity is a problem, think of it this way - can it ever be possible that a reduction in the array of sweet wonderful fruits to choose from is a good thing? This writer thinks not.

November: time to review the season

Class on Wednesday, November 9th, we were in the sustainable agriculture lab again. We continued with the season in review, looking at what went well and what could be improved upon. Our harvest by weight showed the squash and potatoes being the largest harvest, not surprising.

For next year, the class is thinking of trying Spaghetti Squash and Blue Kuri Kabocha Squash and not so many pumpkins. The Orange Summer Kuri and the Galeux d'Eysines did well as they were sweet and good for eating. The corn didn't take well, most likely because of the high wire worm population in the field. We tried the variety Luscious but were not happy with it, so next year will probably be Peaches & Cream as it is sweet and very popular. In the Terrace garden, we somehow got a melon plant in with the summer squash and it did well so next year the class will probably grow some melons. The Hakurei Turnip is white with a crisp texture, nice for eating raw. Once people tried it, it became popular so next season the class will definitely grow more. We tried sweet potato not knowing if it would be warm enough for it, but it seemed to do ok. So the class will try it again next season, planting it earlier than we did this year. The spring was really warm and made it hard to grow a lot of the greens because they like cooler weather and they just bolted. We planted too many beans for the size of our class and we couldn't keep up with the harvest and most of it got tiller under. Not a loss, as it makes a good nitrogen fixer and organic matter.

We collected more seed from the hulless pumpkins for the trial.

A inexpensive oil press was purchased to extract the oil from the seeds, but it didn't work well so.

We did figure out that the seeds were approximately half oil to half meal and the amount of oil worked out to be about two percent of the weight of the pumpkin.

 

 

But before pressing, the seeds needed to be roasted.

 

 

 

Out at the Orchard, the garlic we planted is starting to grow and the cover crops are doing well.

 

It's a little sad that the Agroecosytems Management classes are coming to an end, as it has been a lot of fun, a great group of people to work with, and a great learning experience. Part of it has been hard work - digging up potatoes, some parts a bit monotonous - picking beans, learning that tractors (even though they use fossil fuels) do certain jobs in a fraction of the time - tilling the beds (priceless!) and honestly I personally would not be able to do the physical work for very long before being worn out. I think life is about balance, and it is especially true for agriculture. Farming sustainably is not about going backwards, it's about looking at the whole picture and seeing what we are doing wrong for the environment and what we can do to work within the environment/nature. Learning about the natural ecosystems and how they work. By doing things like farmscaping, providing habitat for the native predators of the pests on the farm instead of using insecticides that tend to kill a wide range of insects the bad and the good.  Just to have the pest populations bounce back faster than the predator populations, meaning you have to continue to use insecticides creating an unhealthy vicious cycle. There is still so much to learn about sustainable farming, and this program is a great place to start.

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Life in the Rain: Sustainable Agriculture in the Winter on the 'Wet' Coast

Class Date: October 26th 2016

Even though fall and winter are often the times when those who are not involved in Agriculture think the farmer has time off, and the weather is often miserable, there is always something to do when running a farm. Therefore, instead of doing outside work, we did some inside work and then had a quick walkthrough of what had been done on the terraces over the last couple of weeks. 

Our first task inside was cutting open some of the hull-less pumpkins that we had grown at the Orchard and calculating how productive the plants had been. Although it seemed that most vines only produced one pumpkin, a few vines produced more than one pumpkin. However, counting the number of pumpkins from each plant was not to be our method of calculating productivity. Our method of calculating productivity was to count the number of seeds in each pumpkins, since these pumpkins are harvested for their seeds to create pumpkin seed oil. Once we got the pumpkins opened in half, we measured the length and width of one of the halves, then halved that piece again and removed the seeds from one of the pieces. The pumpkin, now in quarters, already previously weighed, was given to the pigs at the TFN farm so as not to waste any of the delicious tasting seeds or any other part of the nutritious pumpkin. The collected seeds were then rinsed and weighed; they will be weighed again once they have been dried down. A seed oil press was to arrive for our use in a few days, so it might be possible to squeeze some of the seeds next week! 

There had been two different seed sources that the pumpkins had come from (Austria, apparently the location that the variety had been developed, and another source), and there was a noticeable difference between the two sources. The pumpkins produced from the Austrian seed source were shorter and rounder in appearance while the pumpkins from the other seed source were taller and narrower with more prominent striations running parallel down the side of the pumpkins. There was also a difference in the taste of the seeds. The Austrian seeds were sweeter tasting than the seeds from the pumpkins from the other source. 

A lovely example of our Austrian Hull-less Pumpkins

Once we had cut up and removed seeds from several pumpkins, we went outside and down to the terraces for half an hour or so and walked around to see what had been done. 

Although the terraces didn’t look as green as lush as they had been during the summer, there was still an awful lot going on. The dye plants that had been planted during the summer seemed to be faring the cool and wet last few weeks rather well, although the second planting of peas that had been done didn't look to be doing as well. However, there were several healthy looking broad bean plants who did not seem bothered by the weather at all!

Some of the Dye plants on the Terraces

The rapidly-growing Broad Bean plants

The row covers that had been placed on much of the terraces only a few weeks back half many wonderful surprises underneath them. Young scallions and lettuces were doing rather well, although the scallions were suggesting that a high tunnel might be better for their production rather than a medium weigh row cover. There had been several varieties of lettuce planted, and while we were admiring the plants there was some discussion of harvesting techniques for lettuces during the heavy production times. 

The Scallions underneath their row covers

A wide variety of lettuces under row cover

We then moved over and had a look at the rice plants that had been growing nearby. Masa, our resident rice expert, talked briefly about his recent harvest experiences and how the rice plants seemed to have done fairly well on the terraces. 

Moving down to one of the lower terraces, Mike pointed out that the cover crop that had been sewn several days back was coming up, but not at the pace he had been hoping for. There was then a lengthy discussion about how to incorporate the centre pathway down each terrace into the production cycle. 

Back towards the stairs, we lifted some the lower row covers to reveal the sweet potato greens that had been somewhat of a hit at the Tuesday Farmers market during the later half of the summer. Mike had mentioned that it would soon be time to mow off the tops of the sweet potatoes before the first frost hit and the tops began to deteriorate. 

Sweet Potato greens EVERYWHERE

Mountain Spinach under row cover

The most interesting part of walking through the terraces that day, for this author at least, was seeing the final row cover pulled back and seeing little red plants growing. These were “Mountain Spinach”, as Mike called them, a naturalized plant here in Canada, with a salty spinach-like taste and a hardier behaviour to warm weather. It would be interesting to see how this item would sell at the farmers market. 

Although the Kale looked fantastic, it had a heavier aphid infestation than would have been desirable for market (although there were several mummified aphid, suggesting natural aphid predation) and didn't taste as good as it could have been. 

After our walk outside, we went back inside and had a short discussion about the future of a wash station at the Orchard property. Several wonderful suggestions came about as a result of the discussion concerning the design and the location of the wash station, including one mock-up of the station itself that this author would love to see put into practise in future. Power location and ease of transportation of goods was also discussed during this time. There was a mention of poultry on the orchard in the near future, which has gotten this author very excited about the possibly of animal production on the Orchard. 

More details about what we do in the coming weeks with these and other projects will be up on this page when the next blog post comes. Please stay tuned!

Oct. 19: Final Day at the Orchard and Pumpkin Harvest

We have been having some very soggy, grey weather here on the "Wet Coast" for the past couple weeks, but once again we were lucky to have nice, rain-free morning for our last Agroecosystems class at the Orchard. 

I got to the Orchard a bit early before all the activity of the day started, and I was rewarded for my punctuality by being witness to a beautiful Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias fannini) in what had previously been our corn and bean field. The Great Blue Heron is classified as "Special Concern" here in BC by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), meaning that they "may become a threatened or an endangered species because of a combination of biological characteristics and identified threats".

Great Blue Herons feast mainly on small fish and other aquatic life such crabs, crayfish, frogs, and salamanders. However, they have been known to opportunistically feed on small field rodents. Here's hoping that our heron helped himself to a breakfast of some of our pesky voles while he was visiting the orchard this morning!

Our Great Blue Heron visitor

The Great Blue also checked out the garlic plots we planted last week (can you see him to the right?).

Garlic plots planted last week

Our class also got to welcome the newest member of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems team at KPU, Torin Boyle! Torin has moved from his home in Ontario to be the new Research & Education Laboratory Farm Coordinator. Welcome Torin!

Torin Boyle, new farm coordinator

The main task we needed to get done today before we could officially put the orchard to bed for the year was to get the Styrian pumpkins out of the pumpkin patch.

 A few weeks ago we harvested all of the other pumpkins from the field, but we left the Styrians because we are running a trial on them. The Styrian pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo subsp. pepo var. Styriaca) is a hull-less variety of pumpkin, which means that it works great for crushing to extract pumpkin seed oil, as well as eating the raw seeds (see "Random Facts about Styrian Pumpkins" at the end of this post). Nature's Path here in Richmond is interested in using pumpkin seed oil in their organic prepared products, as it is difficult to find non-GMO canola oil. The company asked us earlier in the year to grow the pumpkins and record the data regarding seed size, number, weight, etc. We found Styrian pumpkin seeds from two suppliers: An Austrian company (which were quite expensive) and from a North American company, Strictly Medicinal Seeds (much cheaper).

We grew the pumpkins from the two different sources side by side in order to compare the size and quality of the two different seeds. However, after a season's worth of growth, we realized today that it was challenging to separate the vines and sort out which pumpkin came from which source! We did the best we could to distinguish the two, and then harvested the rest.

After we got all the pumpkins out, we removed the plastic mulch that we had laid down to suppress weeds and stored it for use next year.

After the plastic mulch was removed, we raked the area by hand and prepared the area to plant a cover crop on.

We choose a cover crop of winter wheat and white clover to plant on the area.

And with that, the Orchard Farm gardens were officially put to bed until next year's new crop of Agroecosystem students return for another season of planting!


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Random Facts on Styrian Pumpkin Seed Oil*

• The hull-less Styrian pumpkin variety first appeared in the early 19th century in the province of Styria in the southeastern region of Austria.
• The hull-less trait resulted from a naturally-occurring single recessive gene mutation in the variety that led to a very thin outer hull.
• Many cultivars have been bred from this original hull-less pumpkin to produce hull-less pumpkins with better yield, seed production, and disease resistance.
• The oil from the hull-less Styrian pumpkin is not considered a "virgin" oil because it must be roasted prior to pressing.
• Roasting allows the proteins in the seeds to coagulate and the convenient separation of the lipid fraction. 
• Roasting also gives the Styrian pumpkin seed oil its distinct flavor and aroma.
• Pressing Styrian pumpkin seeds for oil is mainly a handcraft and done on a relatively small scale by local mills.
• Styrian pumpkin seed oil is light-sensitive and best kept in dark bottles.
• High quality Styrian pumpkin seed oil is a dark green color with orange-to-red fluorescence. 
• Styrian pumpkin seed oil has a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (45.6% of total fatty acid content), followed by monounsaturated fatty acids (35.9%) and saturated fatty acids (18.5%). 

*Adapted from: G.O. Fruhwirth and A. Hermetter. 2008. Production technology and characteristics of Styrian pumpkin seed oil. Eur. J. Lipid. Sci. Technol. 110: 637-644.

Hello, everyone!
It's been beautiful colorful days of fall, I hope you all are enjoying it.
This post is the update for what we have done last week's agroecosystem management class at the Orchard.

We had an intense trio of storms this weekend from Oct 15th to 17th, meanwhile had to plant all garlic in before.
The plots divided into 20 subplots, were at the western area beside a bed of strawberry, and consist of 2 factorial treatments; monoculture of only garlic/polyculture with wheat, and big/small cobs of each garlic bulb. Each treatment has 5 replicates.

Meanwhile, We have done a list of things;
First, Spreading compost and tilling with the tractor.
S

Then, splitting into experimental plots, breaking garlic bulbs, and planting them 6-rows (6-inch row and between plants spacing) per one subplot. For polyculture plots, there are 4-rows of wheat that seeded by using the Earhway seeder, so as the 2 rows of garlic are between the wheat. 

We made it before the dusk to set all garlic cloves into the ground. Dr. Mike's intention of this experiment is to see the potential correlation between planted clove size, as well as poly-culturing with wheat, could be proportional to the yields next year.

There is also an intention to harvest the wheat grains but we did not have a comparing "wheat-monoculture plot". Still, intercropping effects on garlic can be analyzed when we harvest them, such as resistance and resilience against environmental/biological stresses and shocks, not only the bulb size (Eric Block, 2010. "Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science").

It is getting close to what people describe as the "Raincouver" here in wintertime, but I wish everyone is going to have a healthy, exciting, and meaningful end of the year 2016.

Cheers!
Masa
 

Time To Start Cleaning Up And Getting Ready For Winter

It's October 5th and a beautiful day to be outside. The crops are finished at the Orchard except for the winter squash that we are harvesting today.

We have to weigh the squash so we know how much we harvested in this plot, and also so comparisons can be made with other harvests, be it past or future or other areas. This lets us know if we need to do something different, for example use more compost or maybe it's just not the right soil type for growing the crop. This is done for all the crops to see what does best where and with what amendments  to the soil, such as compost.

We ended up with two pickup trucks full!

 

While we were harvesting the squash and pumpkins Mike and Masa were checking the wire worm traps that were in the corn plot. Wire worms are tough little larvae of the click beetle that like to eat the roots of grasses which corn belongs to, and they also like to burrow into potatoes. They are a real agricultural problem as there are no real good solutions to getting rid of them especially in certified organic farming.

 

 

 

Here Masa is digging up one of the traps,

 

 



 

and Masa with the trap. The trap is just a plant pot with soil and wheat seeds in it to attract the wire worms.

 

 

Breaking apart the soil looking for wire worms,

 

 

and finding them. Meanwhile,

 

 

 

Leanne and Mike are pulling the last of the pole beans and netting out of the field to let the plants dry out so it will be easier to get the plants and netting separated.

 

 

Masa is not the only one who found pests in the vegetable beds. Leanne found a young vole. They dig holes down into the soil and make their homes in among the crops and also at the base of fruit trees. Voles are a big pest problem here at the Orchard as they like to eat the vegetables and roots including the fruit trees' roots.

 

 

Back at the campus, we unloaded the pumpkins in the underground lockup.

 

 

These are Galeux d'Eysines pumpkins, they are a French heirloom variety that are salmon in colour with growths that look like warts. They are supposed to be good for making pies, and not sure if this is true, but the more warts the sweeter the pumpkin.