WEEK VII - June 23 - 25

WEEK VI

June 23 to 25

The class went to the TFN farm. 

Sorry folks, I didn't have my camera that day, so, no pictures for this posting...

After an educational tour given by Mark, our host, we were able to help with transplanting the seedling the Farm School student have been growing in their tunnels: lettuce at 8″ spacing, swiss chard,  pac choi at 6″ spacing, and spring onions and scallions at 4″ spacing in the Market Garden Sector.

We also applied a mixture of fertilizer to these beds by mixing potting soil, lime and Gaia Green all purpose organic fertilizer (a 4-4-4 mixture consisting mainly of feather meal,bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal, and ground gypsum).

We noticed that for all the time we spent there, it was extremely windy. We were told this is a constant in the place. 

Also, we observed that the soil, which was wet during our visit during the spring has dried out. The structure and consistency of this soil is extremely silty, dominated by fine particle sand. This comes to no surprise since we know that the site was heavily farmed for decades by potato growers using conventional agricultural methods.

The farm had acquired since the spring a lo of cute chickens that are housed in movable coops.

The crops in the tunnels looked quite impressive. The varieties ranges from tomatoes, to eggplants, and peppers.

At the end of our visit, we help prepare 72 and 128 cell trays for starting new seedling. We were able to knock some of Mark's list by seeding several varieties of cabbage and kohlrabi.

Potato Harvest at the Terraces

We planted much of the potatoes in March 18. Warbas are early potatoes, the are usually the first ones planted, but we planted this variety the last, and although they were looking the worst at the beginning of the spring, wilted and showing symptoms of disease, they were collapsing before flowering, we ended up harvesting approx.. 10kg, which was twice as much as the Russian blue which looked healthier than the warba. We harvested approx. 6kg of the Russian blue, which had a healthy foliage and beautiful purple flowers. Finally, we harvested 8kg of the Yukon gold. Adding all up, we got about 15lb, which comes to 1kg/m² . The Kennebec were left in the ground a little bit longer to see if it flowers. It is great not to see any flea beetle.

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Weeding Blackberries at the Orchard

Today we tried to manage the hedges of Himalayan blackberry that grew on the edges of the Orchard and were getting out of control.

Blackberries are none native perennials that introduce both a number of beneficial and detrimental attributes into the agroecosystem. They have evolved traits that allow them to survive under difficult environmental conditions and outcompete not only the agricultural crops but also many native wild species. They have very deep root systems which allows them to access water that is well below the soil surface and even in a dry season like this, it looks very healthy, lots of photosynthesis, lots of dry matter, it is a delicious fruit, it feeds the birds, etc. They are, however very invasive. Our goal is to clear some sections so we can establish native perennials and other perennials that share some of the positive attributes blackberries but don’t take over so much, increase the biodiversity

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Intercrop: Wheat and Garlic Stand

A feast to the eyes, a beautiful and very healthy stand of wheat that accidentally grew from straw mulching layer to protect a stand of garlic planted in the fall. This resulted in an unadvertised intercrop of some sort  Usually straw should have the heads chop down when the farmers harvest it with the combine, as their are trying to harvest the seed and leave behind the stem, but in this case perhaps the combine wasn't working very well, maybe the stage for harvest was not selected very well and a lot of seed ended up in the load. 

At this stage, the wheat is at what is called the soft dough stage, green and soft, and it hasn't reach full maturity. At this stage, the grain can be easily unshelled and consumed. By the end of the season, the heads will turn golden and they will be ready to harvest. By then, the grain will have become hard and will keep for a quite a few years. Once stored, it will be susceptible to rodent and grain insect damage, but it will be very resistant to fungi, as opposed to when it is at its soft stage. One of the great advantage to grain is its storability. 

Prior to the combines, farmers used to harvest wheat with a scythe and bundle it up into sheafs. The sheafs were threshed by bashing them in order to separate the seeds from the rest of the chaffs, which are the outer part of the seeds. This was done in the wind the seed which are heavy fell down into one pile and the chaff would blow away. Later, threading machines were invented. These machines have a vibrating belt and a blower where the grain will flow and the chaff will blow away. At last combine machines were introduced to "combine" cutting and threshing operations together.

The Community Current News. 2012 Harvest. November 23, 2012. Web

tting an Combine harvesters can be set at a range of levels, normally in a field of wheat, combines are set at a low level, so the cutting blade will cut the straw part of the wheat. Combines can also be set very high, this would be ideal for our mixed plot, since a combine set at a high level will spare the garlic stems while harvesting only the top part of the wheat. There's great interest as more people consider polyculture and how to adapt combine harvesters to polyculture. Back in the 1950s, there were small scale combine harvested in North America, more like pull behind combines, a combined pulled by a tractor and the tractor would provide the power to run the combine. Unfortunately, by 1960s there was not a big enough market in North America for these small scale combines and manufacturing was ceased. These machines are still being produced in China, India Japan to harvest mainly rice, however, today, it is difficult to find one in our area. These machines cannot be imported since they do not meet North American emissions standards, the engines would need to be replaced. 

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June 25

The Orchard

Wireworm control in experimental plots

Next to our squash and corn plot, one of the student has his experimental plots. Sami’s experimental proposal: certain soil amendment may reduce wireworm damage, looking at two different soil amendments and control plots: one of the amendments is Enterra fertilizer. They are using the black soldier fly and the larva of this fly, the maggot, which is very large in size and it consumes grain waste and uneaten vegetable matter. The maggot itself provides a high protein feed source that Enterra sells to poultry producers as a substitute for soybean meal.  Enterra also sells the maggot dropping, called “frass”, as natural fertilizer (100% organic product, rich in essential nutrients, containing approximately 10% N-P-K). Frass make a nutrient rich fertilizer amendment. Enterra has some data that suggest their product may discourage wireworm activity.

The other amendment in the experimental plot is canola seed meal. Canola is a brassica, is high is glucosinolate and there’s data that suggest that it might deter insects and some fungi.

He has seeded all to wheat, which is particularly attractive to wireworms. It is late in the season to plant wheat in this area, usually it must be seeded in the fall or early spring, however, germination of the seeds will be sufficient to collect data on these two approaches.