West Carleton Calorie Crop - rain, hail and bugs - update!

 Huge thanks to Our Farm's Katie and Kate and Blackstar Urban Farm's Karen (1) for their hard work so far. All crops are in the ground, subject to mother nature for the West Carleton Calorie Crop Breeding Project. She has been busy helping us select plants this year. We have been experiencing a very wet spring and early summer, delaying planting for many people.

Sweet Potatoes

Off to a great start at Blackstar Urban Farm site.

Aster Lane Edibles after a hail storm.

Year 1 is to grow out sweet potato for true seed from short season varieties. All three farms have had a great start though a hail storm or two have tattered leaves and I've had golden tortoise beetle though numbers are not overly high. Aster Lane Edibles also has a selection of True Sweet Potato Seedlings that are catching up to the slip planted varieties.

I'm particularly impressed by how gloriously the sweets are growing at Our Farm in their heavy clay soil, especially in this soggy year.

butternut squash landrace - farmer select

I don't have the other farm site photos but I suspect they look similar. Tattered by hail. squash starting to form larger leaves here and some showing first signs of running. 

No sign of major bug or disease issues yet.

This is a sub project off of the Public Participatory landrace breeding project for butternut squash in the area.

ALE site

Beet backcross

ALE site - sea beet

Our Farm. Very useful characteristics of sea beet showing here.

Here at Aster Lane Edibles Beet and Swiss chard rows are heavily predated by probably everything so have been reseeded. Beta vulgaris maritima, which was transplanted, is looking quite lovely. 

Looking good at the other farm sites too. And may I just say, that Our Farm's beets are large and luscious. There's good reason to grow at more than one farm site.

​Blackstar Urban Farm is showing some very nice colour variation in their seedling sea beets. 

Red colour in a sea beet at Blackstar Urban Farm.

true potato seed

Some nice looking potato specimens growing from the Blue Leslie x OP seed kindly sent to me. 

ALE site, oldest transplants.

Eaten but not beaten TPS at ALE

Nice looking TPS at Our Farm

At Aster Lane, we have had our fair share of life nibbling on seedlings like this TPS (2). 

So far, 2017 has started off well. Plants in the ground and growing, some better than others, which is to be expected, and harvests in the future.

Very grateful to the farmers that have taken the bed row space to participate in this project!

(1) Are you the sort of farmer that might want to help grow calorie crops in the nearby Ottawa Valley area? We are looking for two more farms next year. Learn about true seed growing of tuberous crosses and experience the fun of looking at underperforming rows or plants and saying "great selection year."
(2) True Seed, in this context, refers to plants grown from sexually reproduced seed when they are typically grown vegetatively. This reshuffling of genes allows for selection and production of new varieties.