Greenhouse week of Feb 2

Here is updated information

Good news:

The story of greenhouse insects:







5 weeks ago - unwelcomed guest







4 weeks ago - explosion of insect --> extensive damage







3 weeks ago - Bio control taking place








2 weeks ago until now - We're covered.

Insects: Basically the insect population is under control for now. Although they are still around , damages are much less than 2 weeks ago. Most of the herbs and peppers are doing well, and are coming back.


Tomatoes: It is hard to say with certain that we will have a good yield, but we definitely have quite a few tomatoes and some of the cherry tomatoes are ripening. Even though there are some BER (blossom end rot) on selective varieties, overall calcium deficiency is not a concern. There are a few issues with the wilting leaves on selective tomato plants. Once again, this is because of the variety. I don't know why it showed that physical disorder. This could have been caused by a lot of reasons, like water, temperature, fertility regimen, pH, etc. However it would be an interesting question for us to find the cause?

Cucumbers: Due to precipitate and salt built up in the injectors and the fertilizer tanks the cucumbers have not be doing too well. All the injectors and fertilizer tanks have been cleaned, and hopefully they will all work again. Some of the crop-like cucumbers did not get any fertilizer at all for a long period of time. This and insect damage are the reasons why the cucumbers were doing so poorly. And it's not a good idea to feed weak + damaged plants the same way you would healthy plants, so I will tear down all the cucumbers and plant new ones instead.

Lettuce: Lettuce is doing great. ~100 heads are coming up soon. This time, we have 3 different varieties (2 buttercrunch varieties and a leaf lettuce). Don't harvest them before I say so, since all of them are fed with tons of fertilizer --> highly concentrated nitrogen --> toxic --> who wants toxic lettuce? The solution is: before harvest time, ~ 3-4 days earlier, I will water the lettuce with plain water (no fertilizer) to drain out all the fertilizer concentrated in the lettuce, then we can harvest. This is just the recommended practices, but I think it makes sense.

Bad news:

White flies: I have noticed some white flies around on the eggplants. This insect could cause some yield loss for our tomatoes. So we need to keep an eyes on these guys. For the tomato members, if you see significant amounts of them around your tomato plants please let me know. For more information about this insect check here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitefly


Odd news:

The greenhouse is back on track for now. It's up to us to keep it as an experimental learning environment, where we can produce "organic food", or simply learn how to grow plants.

From now on is it possible for the team leader of each group to organize schedules for their team members to come and look after their plants, as well as to report what has done each week? The plants are getting bigger, so regular maintenance needs to be done weekly to make sure the plants are free of disease, and to ensure good yield.

• For the Herbs: Please keep on thinning, trimming, cleaning up dead leaves and planting new herbs where desirable. Please also make a list of the herbs present.
• For the Peppers: Oops... whoever signed up for the Pepper group, please report to your team leader Valerie Adrian at vaa932@mail.usask.ca, since we have a little difficulty in communication.
  
• For the Tomatoes: Please keep pollinating the plants. You guys have done a great job, so keep it up. One more thing, please be extra careful with the tomatoes, since the branches bearing the fruits can easily bend, so put the clips on for extra support if necessary. Keep putting more clip as the plant grow, watch where you put the clips; try to avoid the flowers.
• For the Cucumbers: I have cut down most of the cucumbers, and have planted new ones. Put the clips along the string as the plants grow.

I have lots of midterms coming up, so I won't be around. Please contact me if you're not sure about what to do.

Thanks everyone,

Peter Le.