Nutrient and Nitrogen Management

Since 2012, Niki Strutynski and her husband Nick Neisingh have grown organic mixed vegetables at Tatlo Road Farm, located south of Crofton on southern Vancouver Island. With years of experience working on other organic vegetable farms throughout BC, plus Niki’s degree in Agroecology from UBC, they have created a robust nutrient and nitrogen management program to boost their farm’s fertility and yields, carrying out a soil test every two to three years depending on the area.

In an episode of Organic BC’s Organic Innovation Series, Niki took viewers through the program, highlighting their system for tracking nutrients and making decisions around nutrient applications. To complement the learnings from Niki’s on-farm system, Josh Andrews from the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food dove deeper into why nitrogen management is important, and took viewers through a “how to” of a post-harvest nitrogen test.