Farm Report: April 2004

The return of the prevailing southwesterly winds is a sure sign that spring has arrived with its warmer weather, longer days, and the promise of renewal for all living things. Along my daily walk to work, I find myself anxiously observing the lilac bushes and the apricot and cherry trees, determined to catch the very instant that they tentatively break open their buds. Spring is a glorious time of the year!

Spring is also one of the busiest seasons at the Seeds of Change Research Farm. As I hope you have already discovered, good preparation is key to successfully and smoothly managing your summer garden. Here, the months of March and April are busily spent performing maintenance checks on our farm systems, including: equipment and engine tune-ups; tool sharpening; flushing irrigation lines, repairing leaks, replacing parts, cleaning winter debris out of the irrigation ditches, washing and sanitizing potting trays and testing the sprinkler system in the greenhouse. Field and greenhouse supplies are inventoried and replenished before the growing season even begins.

We also take a soil sample of each field and have it analyzed for the current macro- and micronutrient composition and pH, allowing us to devise a soil amendment plan that is appropriate to our situation. A quick online search can help you locate nearby laboratories that perform extensive soil analyses. Furthermore, agricultural land-grant universities often have on-sight soil laboratories that will perform a basic soil analysis for a nominal fee. You can also do your own soil analysis at home with our LaMotte Soil Test Kit, a fun, simple to use and fairly accurate way of analyzing pH and three basic macronutrients. The LaMotte Kit includes The LaMotte Soil Handbook, which provides a pH preference guide for over 600 trees, shrubs, and plants to help you choose the garden location best suited for your botanical interests.

We enter this growing season with some major changes in our infrastructural systems. Previously, our entire, diverse irrigation system was run off of a single gasoline powered engine older than most of us working on the farm. The engine was replaced this winter by two separate electric pumps. One pump is designed to accommodate high pressure/low flow irrigation systems, such as overhead micro-sprinklers and drip lines. The second pump will best serve our flood irrigation system, which alternatively requires low pressure/high water flow. The new pumps will help us manage our precious water supply even more efficiently than before. In addition, they are a more ecologically sound option, reducing noise and air pollution and eliminating the risk of contaminating our shared irrigation ditch in the case of an accidental gasoline spill.

We are also in the process of installing two additional pollination isolation tents at the farm. Having three tents on site will greatly increase our ability to isolate cross-pollinating varieties for the purpose of seed production on such a limited amount of acreage. Though a largely self-pollinating crop, and therefore not in need of much isolation distance for seed purity, our bean trial will be planted inside one of the pollination isolation tents to protect the plants from the wrath of the devastating Mexican Bean Beetle. The bean trial is for observation and evaluation purposes, not seed production, and we anticipate that the pollination tent environment will allow us to gather valuable information in the beetles' absence.

Emily Skelton, our Greenhouse Specialist, is hard-at-work seeding peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, some brassicas, and dozens of flower and herb varieties. The frost-tender yacon seedlings are still flourishing in the tempered environment of the greenhouse and will soon be ready to ship.

Out in the fields we are preparing to transplant our onion seedlings and carrot roots that we will be producing seed from this season. With 4-6 weeks before the last expected frost, we will be direct seeding radishes, spinach and lettuce, as well as planting seed potatoes. Read on in this e-newsletter for more information about the currently misunderstood potato (in my humble opinion). And that's the buzz from the farm, folks.

Cheers,
Jordan Rainwater, Research Associate
and the entire crew at the Seeds of Change Research Farm

Photo captions: (top) Emily Skelton tends to a bumper crop of Yacon seedlings in the greenhouse. (bottom) Our new electric irrigation pumping station.