Raoul Adamchak is the contact for the collaboration between the Organic Seed Partnership and UC - Davis.

The Market Garden:

The Market Garden was started in the early 1980s by students wishing to gain practical experience in small-scale, organic vegetable production and marketing. Currently, the market garden occupies four acres of land used for year-round crop production, various independent student projects and field activities for selected courses.

Produce from the Market Garden is sold to the ASUCD Coffee House and through the program's community-supported agriculture (CSA) project, Student Harvests.

Students are involved in all phases of organic vegetable production and marketing; these include growing transplants in the greenhouse, direct seeding and transplanting of crops, field preparation, irrigation, cultivation, pest management, harvesting, packing and marketing.

Some students develop independent projects as part of their Market Garden experience. Examples include producing greenhouse tomatoes, monitoring pests and conducting small variety trials. Students working in the Market Garden also may become involved in the farm's composting efforts, as the kitchen scraps from the Coffee House are back-hauled to the farm to be composted.

The marketing aspect of the Market Garden is unique on campus. It allows students to gain first-hand experience in producing, picking and packing a crop of marketable quality. Two distinct markets allow students to understand the sometimes "large differences" between marketing strategies.

Since 2003 there have been ongoing vegetable trials at the Student Farm for both Seeds of Change and the Organic Seed Partnership. Students participate in the growing and evaluating of many vegetable varieties, including sweet corn, winter squash, melons, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash, and carrots.

For more information about the Market Garden, contact Raoul Adamchak at (530) 304-1898

Field Operations for Organic Seed Partnership Trials:

All fields for the OSP trials are certified organic by CCOF. They have been farmed organically since 1977. Before planting, 10 tons/acre of compost was added. The fields are either discred and bedded-up with a lister, or prepared with a 72 -spader. Tomatoes were started in the greenhouse on 4/8 and transplanted into the field on 5/3. Two sweet corn trial replications were made. The first was planted on April 4th, direct seeded. The second was sown in the greenhouse on 6/8/05 because we had a very cool and wet June, and we wanted to be sure we would have adult corn to evaluate. Transplanted on 6/22. Summer Squash was sown in the greenhouse and transplanted 6/3. As I mentioned above, we had an unusually cold and wet June, followed by a very hot July. August cooled significantly towards the end of the month and September and October were quite moderate and dry. Carrots were not sown until the third week in September. They were sown in solarized beds.