I had the chance to head out to Local Harvest Farm last week to check out the progress of their Golden Beet seed crop. We planted out the stecklings for this crop on March 19 and it has really been growing well ever since! We had really good growth on most of the stecklings we […]
Sunday and Monday saw two more plantings of the beet trials at Amara Farm in Courtenay and Growing Opportunities Farm Community Cooperative in Nanaimo. We still have three more farms which needs to sow beets and have already had our first data collection results for germination and vigour! More to come soon!
Saanich Organics trials are being managed by Lisa Willott. Lisa has also participated in our Seed Grow-Outs program and has been very active in the seed growing community for many years. Lisa coordinates seed production activities at Saanich Organics. It has been fun receiving notice from growers that they have planted their beets. I didn’t […]
Our variety trials site at Wisbey Farm in Chilliwack is being managed by Renee Prasad from University of the Fraser Valley. This is one of our conventional sites and is also acting as the Mother site for our Beet trials meaning there will be three replicates of each variety. Renee will be working with UFV […]
As the weather stays more consistently warm we have more growers getting their beet seed into the ground. We were happy to get an email from Dan Oostenbrink at Local Harvest Farm as they got their beet seed in the ground this week. Dan is one of four growers on the Lower Mainland participating in […]
Last week we picked up our carrot isolation tents ans this week we started planning for their set up. As a quick review, we purchased the covers and metal fittings from Redwood Empire Awning in California and had the posts made here. The structures are 1-‘ 20′ and 8’ tall. I headed out to Pitchfork […]
Jeremy and Sheila at Pitchfork Farm took advantage a break in the heat this week to get their beets into the ground. While usually growers would use a seeder for direct seeding crops, they are sowing these ones by hand as they are only sowing 12 row-feet per variety. The weather has been very […]
You may have known that the BC Seed Trials project is underway, but we had the chance to share the news with a wider audience this week thanks to great coverage by Randy Shore in the Vancouver Sun. Check out the article. And read below for our official media release. April 12th, 2016 FOR IMMEDIATE […]
One of the crops for the 2016 BC Seed Trials is Golden Beets. This is a niche crop which is becoming more popular at farmers markets making it a great choice for the trials. The trials will help identify the cultivars which perform best here in BC as well as identify the best options for […]
It has been a very intensive 8 months getting to this point! From grant writing to program design, there has been much to consider to get this program launched! Here is how some of that looked: June 2015 Started grant application to IAF FFCF and University of British Columbia start collaborating on project July 2015 […]