**The majority of these post are recollections from my time in the field and information taken from my field journal.*

DAIKON WRITE UP:

July 19th, 2020: Seeds

Quite understandably, I am still waiting to get information on the status of our radicchio seed order. Not being sure whether we will get seeds in time for planting, I have decided to use a portion of the SURF budget to buy some seeds of my own interest. I am curious about daikon radishes and the wide diversity in varieties, arugula and the differing flavor profiles, bok choy for its aesthetic and taste, and of course radicchio for its beauty and culinary uses. I will choose some varieties from each crop that interest me and carry out some of my own variety trials in addition to the radicchio project (Terrible band name: The Radicchio Project). I will prep the field in the next couple days so that, once the seeds arrive, we can take off towards some growin.

July 29th, 2020: Bed Preparations

1st After making a plan to go ahead and order my own seeds, I got confirmation from The Organic Seed Alliance that our radicchio seeds were in the mail; now instead of 3 varieties of radicchio, we will have 9 – the more the merrier!

2nd With the help of Evergreen’s spading implement and their trusty John Deer, I prepped the beds that would soon be home to a plethora of bok choy, arugula, daikon and radiccho. After turning the field over I blocked out the individual plots using twine to help me clearly separate and identify the various vegetable varieties. I will be adding overhead irrigation and will water the beds a few times before planting in order to allow a flush of weed seeds to germinate, then I can knock them back and plant my seeds!

August 3rd, 2020: Daikon Radish Seeding

All three Daikon replications were seeded on this day. Maps of replications are here:

**Each varietal’s bed contains two 15 foot rows that are 24″ apart, seed spacing is roughly 4″.

August 11th, 2020: Arugula and Pak Choi Seeding

In order to have a steady flow of harvest-able product, as well as the chance to observe these crops temporally, I will have three succession plantings that are roughly 10 days apart. First seeding Aug 11th. Map of seeding:

**Each varietal bed for Arugula contains three 10′ rows. Each varietal bed for Pak Choi contains two 6.5′ rows.

August 22, 2020: 2nd Arugula and Pak Choi seeding.

August 27th, 2020: Radicchio Planting

For the radicchio plots, I was striving to get at least 4 replications with 10 plants per variety but due to some poor seedling success (hot weather -> seedling death) I only have enough transplants for 3 replications with 7 plants for each variety. There will be a 4th bonus planting with whatever plants that remain after these initial plantings. *In the 3rd replication, varieties Bornia Tardiva and Marinanta were left out due to available transplants. Map as follows:

September 4th, 2020: Arugula and Pak Choi seeding #3

September 10, 2020: Initial Harvest, Arugula and Daikon

Weeding, Weeding, Weeding!

September 27, 2020:

See info on harvest and tasting from the Evergreen program – Food, Health and Sustainability here.

October 6th, 2020: Tomato tasting with Evergreen program – Terrior/Merior.

Using tomatoes from my own personal farm, I facilitated a remote sensory evaluation with students from the Terrior/Merior program. In order to make the very physical act of sensory evaluation possible, I packaged up little tasting kits for the students to come and pick up at the Evergreen Organic Farm, no contact necessary – and the next day we tasted the tomatoes! We all then converged onto Zoom and I walked the students through a power point that went into some detail about the differences between tomatoes as a whole and then we all got into appreciating any similarities or differences we found in the tomatoes appearance, smell and taste. The students were also asked to fill out a matrix that allowed them to make judgements, notes, and rankings for the different varieties; I will be able to gather up these matrixes and coalesce the data into one document.

October 13th & 15h, 2020: Full Field Daikon Harvest

For more information visit this.

October 16th, 2020: Site Clean-up

After months of seeding, weeding and eating, the 2020 Brassica field trial has been turned over to the wonderful bacteria and fungi of the Evergreen Organic Farm. After a full field harvest and subsequent data collection, I had the cathartic joy of cleaning and spading the field plot that I was in charge of for the better part of the summer and fall. Now comes the exciting data analysis!