UBC Farm

Well, after a reinvigorating week in Mexico, (cough, cough) I am back at it! Today I started with bench assembly.  My friend Dale, who will be helping me with production was helping me build benches today. Before starting bench assembly we covered the sprouting area with bark mulch.  The mulch Read more

Well, The irrigation line to the sunflower and no-till area wen tin last week.  I spent a day on a machine digging trenches and then had the Farm apprentices to help with the installation and filling of the trenches.  Here is the water line leading to where the sprout harvest Read more

I got my market dates confirmed yesterday and I will be doing at least 35 markets this year.  I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!  I had budgeted 40, but 35 is OK – and I will not have full production for all of them Read more

Today, the first batch of seed arrived!! It was a bit crazy receiving these big bags of seeds today. I guess I really am committed to this project! I have not yet established a good storage space at the farm so the seeds are currently being stored in a second Read more

I am currently running two personal projects at UBC Farm. The main one is developing a model for urban sunflower sprout production under the direction of Brent Skura; the other is the development of a permanent “no-till” field at the farm. It is the no-till project that is the focus Read more

Well, I started building my benches this week, and the sprout area has been mostly cleared of blackberries but it looks like i will still have to do some by hand.  When the tractor was in clearing the brush a salmon berry stem punctured the radiator!! For the benches I Read more

Well, after a relatively successful first trial I am happy to say that I can now demonstrate how not to do a trial! It’s not that bad, but because I am so busy it is hard to be as precise with details. These trials are looking at different growing mediums Read more

So I mentioned briefly I my last post that I bought my seeds. I purchased 15 bags @ $90 (US) each, so now I am definitely committed to this project! Based on my greenhouse growing trials I really had no choice – these seeds just performed too well! So that Read more

So, I will be using the black oil seeds after all! Funny how things go. I was so reluctant to use them in the beginning, but they just performed too well! Their biomass/grams of seed was three times that of the confection variety and they were very consistent in all Read more