Howdy! I hope everyone has had a good week. I am loving this weather and all the beautiful flowers it brings with it. The farm is full of color and I am enjoying every minute of it! This week we worked on cleaning up the field rows. The rows were filled with sorrel and nut sedge, the two most frustrating weeds to get rid of. Nut sedge is the worst in my opinion. It is hard to locate the nut underground and if you have to be sure to completely remove it from the bed. The sorrel is pretty bad as well because you often break off pieces of the giant taproot. If any of these pieces are left in the soil a new sorrel weed will grow. Neither of these can be composted as they risk the chance of spreading the weeds back into the garden. The weeds have quickly come back in the field, we should be cleaning them up next week. The beans are doing pretty well. They have some damage from pests and what I think may be a disease on the some of the organic beans. There are a significant amount of leaf damage on both types of beans, however the organic seems to be slightly more severe. The conventional seeds seem to have a better germination and vigor, with a 96% germination rate compared to the 91% germination for the organic. I was not able to measure the heights of the plants, but the conventional beans are visibly larger. I am hoping that the beans will continue to grow normally despite the pest damage.
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I got the chance to check on my seeds before I left town for spring break on the March 11th. They were a week old and looking great except for the Genovese basil. There is one row in the conventional basil that I obviously missed while seeding, whoops! Everything else is coming along nicely though. I did not see many differences in the germination rate except for the organic lettuce which had a 91% germination rate compared to the 82% germination of the conventional seed. Shout out to Josh for taking care of the plants in the greenhouse over spring break for us! The Thai basil is finally starting to have more seedlings pop up, obviously a much slower germination rate than the other crops. The seeds that germinated have produced healthy looking plants. The only quality difference I can tell so far is between the lettuces. The Nevada summer crisp lettuce is a lot more spindly and weak stemmed than the organic Muir summer crisp lettuce. I am not sure if this is also indicative of rooting quality, but I will be able to answer that question when I plant them out in the field. While checking my plants in the greenhouse I saw these passion vines on one of our other benches. At first I did not recognize the plant because of how badly deformed the leaves were. I asked Michael what type of plant they were and he said they were passion vines with spider mite damage. I had no idea that spider mites could cause such severe damage to vines. We took the pots out of the greenhouse to give them a soap treatment and put them on the hardening off bench. Hopefully these passion vines will be able to bounce back soon. My little beans have sprouted! I don't know why, but I think bean plants are super cute. The germination rate for the conventional seems slightly lower from my initial observation. I can see the seedlings coming up though, so I think they may just be late bloomers!
Our seed order from Johnny's Seeds is finally here! I am very excited to get my intern project rolling. The plants I selected for the seed trial are Borage ,Nevada and Muir OG summer crisp lettuce, Genovese Basil, Sweet Thai Basil, Provider Bush Beans, Sorrel, and Astro Arugula. Unfortunately, some of the seed that I ordered were back-ordered and I was unable to use them in my project. The reason I wanted to do this trial is to see if there is any benefit to planting organic seed compared to the conventional seeds available. I believe that many people may be inclined to buy organic seed because they equate it to being non GMO. It is true that it is non-GMO, but so are the seeds that would be available to the average gardener. I believe that when done correctly organic farming is healthier and more sustainable, however from what I have seen is that the organic standards are not well enforced on a large scale. I want to see if organic seed performs better in any way and is worth the slightly higher price per seed. To test this I got a conventional and organic seed packet for every vegetable. Over the next few weeks, I will be monitoring germination rates, growth, pest pressure, and taste (when possible). Everything except the Borage and beans were started in seed trays. I put two seeds in each cell to hopefully ensure that I would have at least one plant per cell. The seeds were super tiny though and I did not always put just two, I will have to take this into account when I am calculating germination rates. I found that covering each row after I put the seed in the cell helped me keep track, I just wish I had started that on the first couple of trays! After I finished planting all the seeds, I took the trays to the greenhouse and watered the seeds in. I can't wait to see my little baby plants pop up! It was rather cold at the beginning of this week so we waited until it warmed up to start my bush beans. We planted the beans 4" apart on alternating sides to ensure that they would all have enough room to grow and not have to compete. I split the space in half and put the conventional bush beans at the front of the row and the organic variety behind it. When we were done planting the beans we let the drip line run for a while to make sure the soil was nice and moist to aid in germination. I am hoping the temperature does not drop again now that my beans are in the ground. As I mentioned earlier, we had a bout of cold weather earlier this week. The freeze caused some damage to our plants. Most of the plants were able to snap back later in the week, but some did not come back around. Never know what the weather is going to be like in Texas, I am hoping for fair weather as I begin to plant out my project.
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AuthorHi! My name is Gabrielle Melchor and I am a senior undergraduate student in the horticulture science department. After graduation, I hope to pursue a career in nursery management and production or urban green space development. If you have any questions about my internship or would just like to talk plants, you can find me at the Howdy Farm. Gig 'em! Archives
April 2019
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The Howdy Farm at Texas A&M University | Gabrielle's Blog |