vancouver visit - sole food farm in the fall

In late October, after our farmer's market finished up for the season, I got to head out west to spend time with Andrew in Vancouver. First stop was Sole Food, the farm I apprenticed at in 2012. I spent a day helping at the pacific site, then Lissa and I drove around to the other sites to see how they look. These farm sites will always be some favourite spots of mine. It's interesting to feel so tied to this city land - to feel so at home in a parking lot or old gas station. They mean a whole lot to me. The spaces and the people.

Artichokes were a new crop at the Hastings Site this season. Lissa gave
me these two to take home and they were completely delicious.

Visiting the four high tunnels we built at Vernon Drive. Memories of our
rag-tag crew trying to install these monsters in a month straight of pouring rain. 

The new orchard that was installed at the Main & Terminal site. I helped write
the grant for this so it was extra special to see it live and in person.
Meyer lemons, unreal.

View of the Pacific site from up on the bridge -
memories of laying out 2,000+ pallet boxes for weeks on end.

I owe a lot to Sole Food - not only did they teach me so much while I was there farming, but Seann and Lissa answered my constant questions when I was trying to put together the farm plan for School Grown last winter. I still call Seann on the regular with questions about irrigation or low tunnels. They are good people.

And on the subject of Sole Food, here is a recent short film about the farm's work. Pretty great. There's a shot of me too! 

High Tunnels

This season we built 4 high tunnels at our farm site on Vernon Drive. The site is a brownfield - a former gas station that is still under remediation contracts with the former tenant. The soil is contaminated and we grew everything off of the ground in raised beds. The above photo is a panoramic shot of the site after we had cleaned it up and before we started building. There were a few folks living on this sits over the past few years, so there was quite a bit to clean up. 

Assembly

We got our high tunnels from B&W Greenhouses. They come in hundreds of parts - lots of assembly required. It took us a few days just to assemble all of the arches. We then mapped out where all the posts had to go, drove in the posts with sledgehammers (and the help of a jackhammer on the pavement parts) and then started to put up the arches and attach all the purling. Big lesson here: rent a laser level, measure everything at least three times and pay attention to the details. The tunnels all work but there are certainly some wonky parts. Also - we built these in the month of may and it rained most every day, cold and pouring rain. 

But I really learned a lot. I've used a drill growing up but never really felt like I knew what I was doing. But two weeks into this process I was saying things like "let's use the impact driver with the 3/4 inch self tapping screws." My father was impressed!

Up, Up and Away!

Once we got all of the pieces together we had to pull the plastic onto the greenhouse. We pulled the plastic on one of Michael's strawberry houses at Foxglove Farm but we had a team of people who knew what they were doing AND no wind. When we tried them at Vernon we had two folks who had done it before and knew what to expect and a team of exhausted farmers that weren't sure what we were doing. And some light wind.

To pull the poly up you lay it out accordion-folded along the length of the house. You wrap a rock in the corner of the plastic and tie a rope around the rock, leaving lots of rope length to pull on. We tied rocks at both ends and also 2-3 throughout the length of the plastic. We had around 6-8 people helping to pull the poly. Starting on one end you can toss the corner with the rock in up and over the arches (the rock just gives some weight to the corner so that you can toss it.) Someone on the other side should grab the rope and start pulling the corner down on the other side. Someone should be inside the house with a long stick (a broom works well) and they push up on the plastic from inside the house to move it over and down towards the other side. As the plastic starts to slide down you throw over the next rope. Most of the people helping should be on the opposite side, pulling down on the plastic. Be sure to grab it in bunches rather than just pulling on a bit of it - it's really easy to put your finger right through the plastic and you are really pulling hard to get the plastic down.

As you pull more plastic you are getting yourself into dangerous territory - this 200 ft sheet of plastic is essentially a gigantic sail. Just a small gust of wind can catch the plastic and really create a dangerous situation. 

At one point I was holding down the plastic on one side and the when the wind came I was lifted fully off of the ground. Make sure - If the wind comes - just let go! I have heard horror stories of folks not letting go and getting lifted and thrown 20 feet up and away.

The first day we tried to pull it up we had two unsuccessful attempts. The following day we had less wind and more people and got two houses pulled before planting our tomatoes. 

These hoop houses are one of the things I am most proud of this season. They were physically and mentally exhausting, but to look back at what our team did is pretty amazing. And they add such value to our operation - we dry farmed our tomatoes and are able to do some serious season extension at this site.

Tomatoes!

This season we built four high tunnels on an urban brownfield – a former gas station on Vernon Drive. The first two houses are growing some luscious tomatoes.

Sweet Sungolds!

So many delicious varieties - Indigo Rose, Moskovich, Big Beef, Black Cherry, New Girl, Striped German, Green Zebra, Yellow Pear, Pink Beauty, Tomatoberry, Yellow Mini, Favorita and Sungolds. Oh goodness, the Sungolds. These are the Farmer’s Market secret weapon – rarely does someone taste a sweet Sungold and make it far from the tent before purchasing a half pint. They are like candy, straight from the sun.

We were super late with the construction of the green houses – like two months late – which meant by the time we were able to get our tomato plants in the ground they were pretty hurting. The plants were leggy, wilted and purple in colour as they were so deprived of space and nutrients. We weren’t sure if any of them would make it but discovered that tomatoes are truly resilient plants.

We planted them fairly deep in the soil, partly to give them stability in their weakened-stem state, and to help with strong root growth. We loosened the roots of each plant to ensure that they weren’t root bound or tightly coiled. Root bound plants rarely make it.

Each of our planter boxes had two staggered rows of plants, 12 inches apart. Because the plants were so weak, we also picked off any flowers that the plants had at this point to ensure the plant focused its energy on producing strong roots and stems. Once the plant was better established, it could begin to flower. We also foliar fed our plants with a kelp fertilizer to help them make it through the transition.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate:

Tomato plants are classified as either determinate or indeterminate. Determinate plants will bloom and set fruit once in a season. They are often more compact which makes them great for container gardening. They do not continue to grow throughout the whole season – they fruit quick and then begin to diminish. This also makes them great if you want a large volume of tomatoes at one time for making sauce or canning. Determinate tomato plants do not get pruned, as they get need to be able to support lots of heavy fruit at one time.

Indeterminate plants continually bloom and set fruit throughout the whole season. They are vining plants, continuing to grow until they meet frost. These plants are the ones that get regularly pruned of suckers and require some vine support such as staking, or in our case, trellising. The tomatoes we grow at the farm are indeterminate varieties. We are able to trellis them neatly in our greenhouses and are able to have a steady, continual supply of tomatoes through the season for our markets.

Trellising drawing from my notebook.

What I’ve Learned About Trellising:

We ran wire along the length of our greenhouses. We then cut baling twine so that it was twice the length of the height between the plant and the top wire. Tie a loose slipknot around the base of the tomato plant with one end of the twine. Toss the other end of the twine up over the top wire and pull it down to tie another slipknot with that end around the twine. You can then tighten the length of twine using that top slipknot. Begin to gently wind the main stem around the twine as you tighten. Be sure to loosen the bottom knot as the plant grows and the stem gets larger. You can tighten or loosen the top slipknot to adjust the tension of the twine if needed. Check out my charming drawing if the explanation isn't too clear.

What I’ve Learned About Pruning:

When the plant is fairly well established you can begin to prune. First, start at the base of the plant and follow the main stem all the way to the tip – this will help you identify your leader, leaf branches and suckers. That main stem running from the base of the plant to the very tip is your leader.

I find it’s easier to start pruning from the bottom. Hold on to the main stem and look at the first leaf branch – check out the elbow between those two, if there is a new branch in the elbow where they meet, you’ve got a sucker! When they are small, just pinch them off with your fingers close to the elbow. When the suckers get big you will want to prune them with a small knife to ensure you don’t damage the stem or leave an open wound close to the main stem – leaving it more vulnerable to disease. Suckers will draw energy from the plant, so removing them removes the energy demand and helps the plant focus energy on fruit production. Also, removing suckers allows for better airflow around the plant which helps with disease prevention. You can also remove any new growth below the leaf branch, or even a few bottom leaf branches to ensure that the leaves are not touching the soil – again this helps with airflow and deters the spread of disease.

Pruned and soon-to-be trellised.

When you get to the top, it may be difficult to discern which is the leader and which may be a sucker – its ok to wait a few days to see how these develop. If you have two branches though, know that the flowers always form on the leader first, and then on the sucker. So if you are holding onto a branch that you think may be a sucker – look at the branch above it, if that one has flowers, you most likely are holding onto the sucker.

Always be careful of the growth tip of the tomato plant – you never want to prune that or damage it, as that is where new growth happens. If you top the plant and remove that growth tip, your plants won’t continue to grow.

Pruning also leaves your hands smelling delicious and turns them a darker colour that is hard to wash off. 

Hot and Dry:

Mixed cherry tomatoes.

The high tunnels are unheated poly tunnels with roll up sides. They get mondo hot during the day, and tomatoes love hot and dry climates. We aren’t dry farming, a technique where irrigation is cut off after plants begin to fruit, but we are keeping the watering to a minimum (partly due to not having a water source from the city for a few months and having to haul water from the fish plant across the street). Dry farming causes the plant stress out, send roots deep to look for water and focus on fruit production to ensure its survival in the form of seeds. The result is tasty fruit. Some critics say this also can lead to blossom end rot and cracked tomatoes if you aren’t able to successfully control the watering (ie. rain) and there are drastic fluctuations in water availability. The relatively warm dry microclimate of the high tunnel does mean our tomatoes taste fantastic!