Week 8 – Co-Curricular Community Garden Project

Weekly Theme(s) – Compost, Solanaceae, Cucurbitaceae, & Community Engagement.

(Remember to check the weather on a regular basis to stay informed on what’s comin’ up!)

NOAA – click for weather

AGweatherNet – click for weather

Reading(s) for the week:

• Tomatoes (pp194-198) – Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
• Cucumbers (pp284-286) – Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
• Composting (pp57-72) – Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
• Making and Using Compost (pp141-148) – Building Soils for Better Crops

1:1 Planning and Preparing (what’s coming up?)

For me, week 8 always marks the beginning of the end of the quarter – this is when the time comes for me to start visualizing the end and how to wrap everything up with a nice bow. With regards to our garden space, we only have a few planned meeting times left until the quarter ends, and so it is time to start thinking about what we needs to be done by week 10, as well as what will come next (after the end of the quarter).

Not only are we nearing the end of the quarter, we are nearing the end of our planting space; with room for only 3 more beds to be built, we may close out the quarter right as we fill up the entire planting space! I think that this would be a beautifully natural way to go out. Although I hope to have access to more space as the season progresses, I have had to think deeply about what crops I’d like to fill our remaining space with. I have chosen to plant tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in our final 3 beds. As more beds are turned (harvested and then replanted) I will have more space for crops such as dry beans and squash.

For week 8 I hope to focus on building the last of the beds in our space – I think I have been saying this for the last few weeks but I know that it is a arduous and painful job that takes time but we are darn close! Once we have more open and prepped beds, we can begin thinking about transplanting the tomatoes and cucumbers, and maybe even the peppers, by the end of the quarter! My tomato and cucumber starts are ready for transplanting, but the peppers are still a bit of a way out.

~Tuesday~

I have half-way prepped one of the last 3 beds so it would be great to finish that, and then we can begin on another, hopefully having 2 more empty beds by the end of our Tuesday meeting. With that will come the usual amount of weeding, watering, and care-giving that needs to be done every few days. I imagine that building these two beds will take the majority of the time that we have, but if there is any extra time, we may take a moment to talk a bit about the introduction to compost making and compost use.

~Thursday~

With the remaining beds prepped and ready for plants, we can focus our energies on transplanting; this Thursday may mark the beginning of a mass plant-exodus from my green house! All of the cucumber, tomatoes, beets, tat-soi, cabbages, dill, and more are ready to go into the ground! I expect that we will be able to plant nearly all of these on Thursday given the space that we will have prepped on Tuesday. We will talk about how to fit all of these crops into this relatively small amount of space and why certain crops can be crammed together and why certain others cannot. Bring a digging trowel, hori-hori, both right and left hands, or any of your other favorite transplanting tools.

1:2 Tending and Managing (what we did)

It happened; we officially have food growing in every one of the beds that we set out to fill at the beginning of the Spring quarter! Through weeks of hard digging, weed eradication and massive amounts of seeding & transplanting we were able to fill the last three beds of our plot, and now we can hyper focus on the crops that have been growing, giving them the up-close attention that they now require. The runner-beans and the sweet peas are reaching a size where they need to be consistently trellised, the potatoes and the leeks need to be mounded up, and the rest of the beds need a thorough weeding – there is more work to be done!

The community garden was graciously donated 10 metric-yards of Organic compost by one of our community members, and I was asked to receive the delivery on this past Monday. This gardener asked to remain anonymous but I still wanted to shout out to them and pay my respects – thank you so much for supporting fellow community food & medicine growers.

10 yards of compost is A LOT of compost and with the garden’s personal compost piles are out of commission, I am grateful that we have a large amount of organic matter to incorporate back into our soils.

I was so appreciative of all my peers that were able to meet on Tuesday and knock out a huge amount of broad-forking, double digging, and weed-root eradication, so that we could have the rest of our planting space prepped and ready for the incoming transplants! It was a lot of work, but that work made it possible for us to come in on Thursday morning and focus primarily on gently transplanting the sweet peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

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The tomatoes and cucumbers were planted consciously, knowing that they will eventually need to be trellised, with the hopes of being aware of how that may effect the growth of our other beds. My thoughts were that, with the peppers planted on the eastern side of the soon-to-be trellised tomatoes and cucumbers, they would receive ample amounts of morning and mid-day light, only to be slightly shaded out by the end of the day. Although this is true, the afternoon/evening sun is usually hotter than the morning sun, and the peppers would appreciate all the direct heat that they can receive, so perhaps they would prefer the western side of the tomatoes and cucumbers – but alas – it is too late! I am confident that they will still be very productive.

Aside from the transplanting work that we finished this week, there was plenty of other productivity taking place in the form of good ol’ plant growth. It is the time of the season where, with warmer temps, longer days, and warmer soil temps, the plants put on visible growth on a daily basis. This makes it quite fun to let 1 or 2 days pass without coming to the garden and being struck by the size difference of the plants from the last time they were seen.

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For the last bit of info that I want to share, I wanted to highlight the progress that the flax has been making through this gorgeous weather. To recap, I seeded two 15-foot beds with the idea of having one bed dedicated to eventual seed harvest, and one bed dedicated to harvest for fiber. The thought is that, while both beds will set seed that we will harvest, one bed will be managed so that it produces long, straight stems, making it easier to process for linen, and the other will be given more growing space, encouraging more branch growth, thus more flower heads! This week I thinned out the bed that will be managed for seed, and now there is a nice, side by side visual comparison.

When I began, the left hand bed looked much like the bed on the right, and now you can see that many flax plants were removed to allow for 3″-4″ between plant (recommended for maximum seed production). This is my first time growing flax and I have fallen in love with this versatile species; the flax plants are unbelievably soft and I often find myself kneeling next to the beds, simply washing my hands through the soft, little stands.

1:3 Shishito Pepper Trial

Using Google Earth, I found an aerial image of the Evergreen Organic Farm and added my own edits to show the location of the pepper trial in reference to the farm as a whole. As you can see, there is a visible shade line from the southern tree line that is getting mighty close to the trial plot. While I couldn’t figure out exactly what time of year this image was captured, I can tell that it was taken in the afternoon, not too long after high-noon.

I had the opportunity to chat with Ryan Richardson who, among many many other things, is one of the few people at Evergreen that are certified to fly drones and to capture drown photography. Ever since we had this conversation, I have been pondering and researching how I may utilize this resource that is already making regular passes around the farm area. Even further, the school just bought a brand new infrared lens that could possibly be used to measure leaf area index (LAI), and much more. I need to do more research but I would be remiss to not utilize this incredible resource while it is so accessible. Thank you Ryan!

I have been trying to nail down a time that works for the Evergreen farm manager’s schedule (and with my schedule as well) to get into the farm and prep my portion of the trialing plot. In the image above, the portion of the field that is covered with the plastic tarp is the space that we have allotted to the pepper trial and I am eager to get it all set up so the peppers need only to be tucked in!

While one side of the plot is open field, soon to be tomatoes and radicchio trials, the pepper trial butts up to the raspberry patch that is looking rather threatening as it leafs-out and fills in. Perhaps I am paranoid of shade interactions, I know that shade can greatly influence pepper productivity. With this in mind, I will be attempting to make accommodations to ensure the peppers aren’t left in the dark.

1:4 Mentorship Reflection

To be frank, I have been spending a large amount of my personal energy towards beginning the arduous process of healing some of my deep-set insecurities. I have alluded to them a couple of times through these reflections, but it was rather recently that I made an active decision to address them and begin working through them. In the past, due to shame and embarrassment, I buried my ugly emotions away and was afraid to pay them any attention for fear of them becoming real, tangible issues; the truth is, they are (and have been) real and tangible for quite some time and they will continue to haunt me if I don’t face them head on.

I mention this because, through all the changes that come with mental healing, I have also been putting much thought into how and where I want to land with regards to my healing. The future looms over me as I near the end of my time as an undergrad and I have been imagining myself in possible careers; I think that it is all to likely that I will run my own farm business sooner than later, and I have some anxiety (awareness) surrounding my ability to respectfully/responsibly grow food, and the impact of having people help me through this process.

Due to some of the aforementioned insecurities, I have always struggled with asking others to do something for me as I don’t understand why I should have the right to alter someone’s routine for my own personal gain. This is further complicated when I imagine myself in a place of power, such as a boss or owner of a business – although I know how I would like things to be done to meet my farm plan goals, I am weary of telling others what to do. Another aspect of this comes with my awareness of my status as a white male in a world overrun with power hungry, white males.

Following Jose Gomez Farmworker Justice Day, it was made even more apparent to me that there is nowhere near enough recognition, respect, and legislation given to hold up the integral workers/farmers all over the world, and as an aspiring farm owner, I recognize that I have an opportunity to attempt to be an agent of equitable change. As it stands, I know that I have a lot of healing and learning to do but I imagine that this may always be the case, but equitable change rarely happens over night, and at least I am aware that I have the potential to be better and do better.