Results!

We harvested the lettuce and here are our results:

Butter No Clover	Iceburg No Clover	Chrispino No Clover	Tatsoi No Clover
88.67 g	91.5 g	50.5 g	175.33 g
Butter w/ Clover	Iceburg w/ Clover	Chrispino w/ Clover	Tatsoi w/ Clover
19.83 g	26.33 g	17 g	41.5 g

Non clover in the back and clover in the front

Results!

We harvested the remaining radishes and here are our results:

Average Radish Weight in grams

Pink Beauty (Clover)		Pink Beauty (No Clover)		Daikon (Clover)	Daikon (No Clover)
87.9		103.9		816.5	478.2

The clover still seems to be competing with out lettuce

 

So the plan is to trim back the clover and see if they catch up, but this is an important observation.

November 10th Update

 

 Hello readers! We are realizing the difficult of weeding with the clover companion crop. It all has to be done by hand as to leave the clover. The clover is also competing with our crops for sunlight, we may have to cut it back. All in all our plants are growing well, looking to do some more weeding on Wednesday.

                                                  With Clover                                                                                         Without Clover

Our first Daikons pulled from both sides: one on left from Red Clover side, one on right from no Red Clover side. Hold on the judgement about if adding clover helps with growth or not. This is only the first. We will judge that when all are pulled out. November 10, 2014

                              A couple of happy campers, Lady Bird Beetles on a Daikon leaf.

Radish Update

A fair amount of the Pink Beauty radishes are splitting where they are exposed. I looked into the issue and found that this often happens with inconsistent watering. Because they are on an irrigation system, it seems unlikely that this would be the cause. It could very well be that they are just growing too quickly and we waited too long to harvest. Definitely still edible!

Transplanting!

This past week we put the transplants in the ground.  (see below)

Pre-transplant

post-transplant no clover

Post-transplant with clover

 Field setup:               

Back to Hull Rd. facing the field from right to left

Mammoth Red Clover intercropped:

(Pink beauty x 18 with Alpine Daikon x 12) (Crispino Iceberg lettuce x 24 with Nancy Butterhead lettuce x 24) (Oakleaf lettuce x 24 with Tatsoi x 24)

(Buffer row of nothing)

No Clover intercropped:

 (Crispino Iceberg lettuce x 24 with Nancy Butterhead lettuce x 24) (Oakleaf lettuce x 24 with Tatsoi x 24) (Pink beauty x 18, Alpine Daikon x 12)

With clover

Without clover

 For fertility we used PHC Organic Plant Feed (9 - 0 - 1) right after we finished transplanting and we plan to continue application about once a week. 
 

We haven’t had any issues with disease and insects thus far, but weeds have been annoying.  Once our transplants get established we will lay down hay around them which should help lighten the burden. 

Cody weeding

 Lastly...

Just look at that beauty

This past week we decided to give our seedling trays a little boost. Fish and seaweed emulsion was watered in. Next week, we plan to plant our seedlings into the garden.

First Field Day (Oct. 1, 2014)

Today, after about two weeks of waiting for cooler weather, we decided to go ahead and inoculate our Mammoth Red Clover and get it sown! Along with the clover, we sowed our Daikon and Pink Beauty radishes.

The clover inoculant treated 50 pounds of seed! Since we only had one pound, we had to seriously portion our quantity to be used. Once portioned, Brent mixed the inoculant and a small amount of water with the seed. 

Brent mixing inoculant into clover seed.

Every test row will have two different cultivars of crop on each side, and a row of clover in the middle and on the outsides of the row. 

Center row of clover shown.

Here we are pulling weeds from the rows before seed is sown.

(L to R: Joe, Brent, Rebecca)

    Joe covers the newly sown clover seed.

Day 1 down!

The transplants are looking great and will be ready to move into the field in a few weeks!

(Tatsoi)

(Crispino Iceberg Lettuce)

Brief Introduction
 

Left to Right: Cody Artzner, Rebecca Rabinowitz, Brent Buell, and Joseph Dean

Cody is an English major from New Port Richey, Florida

Rebecca is an Organic Crop Production major from Venice, Florida

Brent is a Finance major from Fort Myers, Florida

and Joseph is a Biology major on the Pre-med track from Titusville, Florida

Our overall goal in this project is to quantify the benefits of Mammoth Red Clover nitrogen fixation and possible weed suppression grown with vegetables.

We are growing

1. Tatsoi Greens
2. Pink Beauty Radishes
3. Crispino Iceberg Lettuce
4. Baby Oakleaf Lettuce
5. Nancy Butterhead Lettuce
6. and Mammoth Red Clover as our cover/companion crop

Thanks for checking us out and stay tuned for more updates throughout the semester!