WEEKVI - June 16 - 18

WEEK VI

June 16

Richmond Terraces

Corn Seedlings are coming along with differences in height probably due to nutrient availability in the soil.

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The Tobacco plants are growing very well!

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The Yukon gold potatoes are already showing signs of senescence  Dying back of this variety might be caused by fungal infection. We need to check for early blight by taking samples of sporulation in necrotic leaves and checking for lemon shaped spores under the microscope.

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We removed the suckers from the tomato plants.

There's a significant difference in size between the tomato plants growing inside and outside of the tunnel.

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Cucurbits growing well inside and outside the tunnel.

Zucchinis

Cucumbers

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Second load of Compost

In spite of been planted on April 30th, beets grew very little after germination. This is due to the fact that the second load of compost was clearly of low quality, as compared to the other loads.

Most beets did not grow after germination.

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There are clear indications of a decrease in aphid population and an increase in ladybug population, although this might not be indicative of a significant reduction in pest pressure due to the fact that aphids are vectors to several viral pathogens. Filed observations show a wilting of the plants due to pest pressure or early senescence of the plants.

Another crop impacted by pest pressure are the leafy greens in the east terraces. Chard and spinach have been eaten by local rabbits.

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Experimental plots

The difference not only in germination but also in growth is visible now among the experimental plots, with the control plot performing the poorest, followed by the Net Zero crops and the Harvest Power being the best of the three compost treatments. The difference was more noticeable in the lettuce and spinach but not so much in the swiss chard. This  might be due to a difference in the content of salinity between the treatments. Even pus lane, which has been growing very well across the terraces performs poorly in the sandy soils of the Control plots. Clover growing also in the control is an indicator of nitrogen deficiency in the soil. 

Purslane growing in the control plots

Clover growing in the Control plots

Swiss Chard in Control Plots

Swiss Chard growing in Net Zero Compost

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Exotic Leafy greens

Purple Lambs Quarter, Spicy Arugula, Bitter Italian Dandelion, and Drunken Lady lettuce are growing quite well on the East Terrace.

Leafy Greens Growing in Harvest Power Compost Plot - not experimental

Lambs quarter

Beautiful Lambs quarter

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Midseason Fertilization Application

Crops were showing symptoms of nutrient deficiency, such as yellowing of the leaves. A mixture of organic fertilizers was prepared and the plants were "dressed" with a 2.5-3.5-3 NPK blend.application.

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June 18

The Orchard

We installed part of the irrigation system in at the orchard. We started by laying the lines along the rows of fruit trees E block. 

The orchard is hooked up to City water at 40 gallons per minute on the main line. The main line runs all the way around the back of D block. The line has five subheathers, the zone come off the main line. The line is underground and buried, we can mow over but not till over it because in some areas the line is laying just below ground, so ask before you dig!

The only thing visible of the zones is the hoses that come up above the ground, so we have a hook up that comes for each row of trees that have been existing. This allows us to lay a thick hose all the way down the length of the rows. The hose has no holes , so we are going to puncture the hose with a special tool and clip the emitters, two for each tree.

The emitters release 4 gallons per hour, so each tree is going to gets 8 gallons per hour. We will run the system for 30 to 35 minutes up to one hour per day from June to the end of the season. The system is all automated by means of an electronically control valve system. It is all control with wires buried underground and connected to each individual valve. Lots of stuff to keep in mind when digging!  Each zone can be controlled independently from each other. The drip that comes from the emitters is really good for water conservation. Ideally, it would be better to raise the lines a few centimetres of the ground to keep it safe from the weed waking process. Once raised it is easier to see if there's any damage issues. There hasn't been too many issues with voles eating the hoses in the past (keep our fingers cross). 

Next we need to install the irrigation system in the corns and squash plots and the potato plots.

WEEK V - June 9 - 11

WEEK V

June 8 - 11

We came back to the Orchard and continued working on zone B. Although the soil was tilled the week before, we found areas of high clay content and extreme compaction. We had to use the broad forks and shaves to double dig some of these areas in order to plant the corn and squash.

The squash planted a couple of weeks before in the first set of rows showed good germination.

The season is still is unusually dry, with no effective precipitation taking place anywhere in the Lower Mainland.The soil and most of the vegetation is extremely dry, temperatures averaging the high twenties for most of May and June. Some farmers report 40% germination success in their fields, and many had to bring and install their irrigation systems significantly earlier than any other growing season in history. Many are incurring additional and unexpected irrigations costs on top of the losses!

According to Environmentalist David Suzuki "...the likely causes are complex: a stuck jet stream, the Pacific El Niño, natural variation, and climate change. Even though it’s difficult to link all events directly to global warming, climate scientists have warned for years that we can expect these kinds of extremes to continue and worsen as the world warms. Some hypothesize that the strange behaviours of this year’s jet stream and El Niño are related to climate change, with shrinking Arctic sea ice affecting the former" (Welcome to an extreme, warming world, David Suzuki Foundation Web).

Some of the field observations we collected and discussions with gardeners point to a general stunning and early blooming of some crops, such as peppers and basil, and poor performance of peas and carrots. Most feel it has been a challenging season.

WEEK IV - June 2 - 4

WEEK IV

June 2

Working at the terraces

West terraces

Weeding

Students planted three varieties of sunflower along the north wall of the west terraces, close to the main entrance. Next week we will plant a row of corn front of the sunflowers and beans on the bed across from sunflowers.

Weeding was conducted in and around some of the beds using the wheel how. Some beds were hand weeded because weeds too close to the seedlings.

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Transplants

The squash on the south beds of the west terraces, transplants from seedlings growing in the lab, showed good establishing and survival rates, especially the ones against the wall, maybe perhaps due to the microclimate created by the walls facing south, or may just be bigger, healthier transplants that were placed there by chance. There’s also a noticeable difference in size already between the tomatoes and squash growing in the tunnel and the ones growing outside the tunnels, the ones in the tunnel are already larger in size. All these vines will need trellising soon.

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Seeders

Observing the beds where we are comparing the Earthway and the Jang seeder, there’s definitely a difference in seed density. The row of lettuce sowed by the Jang seeder is denser than the row sowed by the Earthway seeder. The later is more scatter and patchy.

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Spinach

The spinach next to the kale is going to seed. We planted two varieties, the tyee and the Bloomsdale savoy, the Tyee is bolt resistant and although the label on the blooming spinaches by the kale reads Tyee, we believe this was mislabeled as tyee and the blooming plant might just be the savoy variety. Also the savoy has a much crankier leaf than the Tyee.

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Pac Choi

The pac choi is ready to harvest, some of it is going to seed, beautiful yellow flowers, a broccoli like flower characteristic of the brassicas. As they go to seed, the leaves are going to get a much pungent flavor, but are still be edible.

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Garlic

We need to harvest the garlic escapes before they go to flower.

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Leeks

Some of the leeks transplants survived and are still around but our all ions harvest is going to be small this year.

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Potatoes

The potatoes are flowering. After blooming, the plants will be allocating photoassimilates down into the root, and the tubers will start to size up. At this point, there will not be anymore cell division in those tubers, cell number is already established and now cell will start to increase in size. At this point, we need to mount the potatoes. There’s signs of dead tissue in some of the varieties, however, there’s no fussy or moldy signs on the necrotic spots, therefore, we can be confident to overrule early blight, especially since there hasn’t been any effective precipitation over the last month and it has been an extremely dry and sunny, unusual spring. Additionally, the samples of tissue that were taken to the lab showed the presence of some sort of fungi spores but not the lemon shape spores of early blight.

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Peas

We need to harvest more peas so they continue to flower. Usually people discourage harvesting peas when the foliage is wet because peas don’t have a very strong root system, and wet soil tend to be a loosen the soil, so it is really easy to yank pea plants by mistake while trying to pull the peas out. It is important we snap the pea off instead of pulling it off, specially because we have a loose sandy soil already in the terraces, which becomes looser with the rain. Aphid population in peas and broad beans is still an issue in spite of of having a very healthy ladybug population. We will need to spray the plants with water to try to remove some of the layers of aphids that are attached to the surface of the leaves, stems and pea pods. The next approach will be a safe soap application in order to dissolve the waxing cuticle of some of these aphids. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any predatory wasps that could apply some pressure to the aphid population. 

We checked for presence and amount of mycorrhiza in pea roots. We found a fair amount, which indicates the soil has a balance amount of nitrogen, lack of nitrogen would've led to a larger amount, yellowing of the foliage and perhaps the presence of clover and other leguminous species in the bed.

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Carrots

Carrots show poor germination rates, with the ones behind the sign being weaker and smaller than the rest. In a large production setting, farmers prefer to plant the carrots at the same time so they can harvest them all together using a mechanical harvester. A lot of gardeners however prefer to have the crop staggered in order not to have to eat or process all the carrots at the same time. We can mimic this approach and reseed in order to fill in the gaps that we have in our carrot rows. In the meantime we will continue using cover to protect them from pests and dehydration.

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East Terrace Experimental Plots

We harvested and weighted the lettuce and the spinach from the experimental plots. We recorded everything in the chart for later analysis.

We see mushrooms growing in the Net Zero plot, not in the Harvest Power or the sand plots. There’s the spores present and the right mix of carbon and nitrogen in the Net Zero compost.

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Spinach

Some of the spinach in the east terraces was eaten by rabbits, this is obviously going to affect our yield. Most of the plants are going to seed, most of the plants of the Bloomdale Savoy bolted rather earlier. We  harvested the  spinach and recorded weight and counts, and record the ones that have been eaten by rabbits and probably exclude those ones. We did the same with the lettuce. We will leave the chard. We will be able to obtain some yield data.

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Lambs quarter

The lambs quarter is doing very well and looks gorgeous!

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Presence of plastic pieces in the compost

In order to obtain a more accurate estimate, a count of the number of pieces of plastic that came with the compost from the two different suppliers was obtained by scooping three littler samples from every plot and by placing the sample on a tray, and counting the number of plastic particles found in of the samples.