Corinna Headley says she was supposed to plant the first crop of outdoor greens at Endswell Farm in mid-March, but unusually cold winter weather forced her into the farm’s greenhouse.
This adjustment, was one of many Headley and the team from Home Farm Gardens have had to make at their market gardening operation. Flooding, both in the field and in the greenhouse has been another major struggle.
After planting their tomato seedlings, Headley noticed something starting to eat away at the small plants from the stem, up. It turns out there was a “wire worm” infestation. These pests stay in the soil for between two and six years, and farmers along the coast have all suffered from them this year.
“We learned, from an advisor at West Coast Seeds, that if you bury potato chunks down at the stem the worms will eat them instead of your plant,” says Headley. “It worked. Of course, this means we had to pull out chunks of potatoes and add new ones to between 500 and 600 plants every day, but I’d say we’ve saved about 70% of our tomato crop.”
Islander Sarah Dent works with a resource network for young farmers and people who are new to the agriculture sector across BC (called the Young Agrarians). She’s been observing the work at Endswell and says the team of farmers there have been amazing at responding to the varying crises they’ve come up against.
“It’s been awesome to watch, actually,” says Dent. “They deal with things that would make people working in any other kinds of business just pull their hair out. Every year, there’s a new and major challenge for farmers to face, whether it’s drought, pests or too much water. I would predict that as climate change intensifies, so will these struggles.”
Headley says that for the first time, last week she felt she finally had enough produce to sell at the weekly tailgate market at BICS. The next challenge, she says, is getting people out to the market to buy their food.
