New/updated @ eXtension

This webinar was recorded on January 20, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwyDS2mv8Iw

About the Webinar

In this webinar, Jan-Hendrik Cropp will describe how to create organic cropping systems using diverse living and/or dead mulches, along with rotational conservation tillage to increase soil health. While the webinar will focus on one production system from an organic farm in Germany, the principles can be applied to a wide variety of agricultural operations. The presenter recently returned to Germany from a 3-month research trip across the US and Canada, where he met many innovators in organic no-till and reduced tillage. He will refer to regional examples and experiences from his travels in the webinar.

Slides from the webinar as a pdf handout

For a list of the cover crop species mentioned in this presentation, see this blog post by Natalie Lounsbury (scroll down to the end)

About the Presenter

Jan-Hendrik Cropp is a farmer pioneering organic no-till and minimal tillage systems, a consultant on soil fertility, and a freelance journalist living in Germany. He studied organic agricultural science, and most recently worked on a 12-acre vegetable farm.

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12857

This webinar was recorded on January 27, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRUWcdSZlpg

About the Webinar

As consumer interest in locally/regionally grown heritage and ancient wheat has grown, so too has the need for identification of high-performing varieties and management practices best suited to produce high-quality grain. Team members of the NIFA OREI-funded Value-added Grains for Local and Regional Food Systems project will present information derived from three years of experimentation at multiple sites on varietal performance, including yield potential, standability, disease tolerance, and grain quality, and growing practices, including planting rate and nitrogen fertility application. Farmer experience with and recommendations on growing these crops will also be featured.

SLIDES FROM THE WEBINAR AS A PDF HANDOUT

About the Presenters

Steve Zwinger, North Dakota State University Carrington Research Extension Center, is part of the agronomy team working with the project. Steve's research has focused on crop performance and management practices, along with varietal evaluation. He has conducted research with ancient over multiple years and environments, including University research plots and in certified organic farmers fields.

Michael Davis is an agronomist with the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station who has been conducting small grain trials on certified organic fields for the past 17 years.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12882

This webinar was recorded on February 10, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY4WzlwfpbQ

About the Webinar

The presenters will discuss what worked and what did not work on five long-term organic farms. They will also explore the question of how much diversity is enough and how to manage on-farm biological control organism habitat.

Slides from the webinar as a pdf handout

Insect Pest Suppression Table

About the Presenters

Helen Atthowe has been farming on her own and consulting for other organic vegetable and fruit farms for 25 years. She was a horticulture extension agent for 15 years and owned and operated Biodesign Farm (30 acre diverse organic fruit and vegetable farm) in western Montana for 17 years. She spent 6 months as consulting vegetable grower for a 2000 acre organic vegetable and fruit farm in northern Colorado with a 5000 member CSA. She now co-owns Woodleaf Farm in northern California.

Carl Rosato started Woodleaf Farm in northern California in 1980. He is also an organic soil management consultant. Woodleaf Farm (26 acres of diverse organic fruit and vegetable production) is an organic pioneer: the 9th farm to be certified organic by CCOF in 1982. Carl has been doing organic disease and insect management research on his farm since he received his first OFRF grant in 1992, has taught organic farming at local colleges in California, and in 2012 received the Eco-farm 'Steward of Sustainable Agriculture" award.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12836

The webinar was recorded on March 10, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQLgWBQA3M

About the Webinar

The webinar will cover the importance of native bee pollinators in organic farming systems, particularly diversified systems that produce many crops per year. We will first discuss the diversity of native bees in farming systems, and the roles they may play in supplementing (or replacing) honey bees for pollination services. Our webinar will also describe an ongoing research project in western Washington on native bee pollinators. 

Slides from the webinar as a pdf handout

About the Presenters

David Crowder is an assistant professor of Entomology at Washington State University. His research focuses on insect ecology and the role of sustainable agriculture on insect communities

Elias Bloom in a PhD student in Entomology in the lab of Dr. David Crowder and Washington State University. His research focuses on the biology and ecology of native bee pollinators in diversified organic farming systems.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12840

This webinar was recorded on March 17, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lon_gSTiJco

About the Webinar

In 2015, apples and pears produced organically under the USDA National Organic Program standard must utilize non-antibiotic materials in spray programs for fire blight suppression. Effective non-anrtiobiotic control programs will be presented with particular emphasis on integrated sequencing of materials. Interactions among non-antibiotic materials and their potential to cause russeting on developing fruits will be addressed.

SLIDES FROM THE WEBINAR AS A PDF HANDOUT

About the Presenters

Ken Johnson is Professor of Plant Pathology at Oregon State University, Corvallis.
Rachel Elkins is a University of California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor and is located in Lake County (Lakeport), CA.
Tim Smith is a Washington State University Cooperative Extension Area Agent and is located in Chelan County (Wenatchee), WA.

This group has been involved with fire blight management for over 20 years.

Find all upcoming and archived eOrganic webinars at http://www.extension.org/pages/25242

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12902

This webinar was recorded on March 25, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd7dgoSL2lk

About the Webinar

The world is buzzing with talk about improved tastes and nutritional profiles in products made from ancient wheats like einkorn, emmer, and spelt, and from heritage types of bread wheat like Red Fife. Which nutrients are higher in which varieties of these different wheat species? How does the flour cook up and how does the bread taste? How does one actually evaluate these characteristics in an unbiased way? Join us for a discussion of the results of baking and sensory testing of a number of kinds of wheat and a nutritional analysis of 100 kinds of einkorn

About the Presenters

Lisa Kissing Kucek is a graduate student at Cornell University. She collaborates with organic farmers to breed new genotypes of wheat, spelt, emmer, and einkorn for the Northeast United States. 

Abdullah Jaradat, Supervisory agronomist and research leader working for the Agricultural Research Service in Morris, Minnesota. A wheat geneticist specialized in hulled wheat species and wheat landraces of the Fertile Crescent.

Julie Dawson of the University of Wisconsin conducts research and extension to support urban and regional food systems, with an emphasis on small scale diversified farms, market gardens and community gardens.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12967

This webinar was recorded on April 7, 2015. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJApXcTG2Zs

About the Webinar

Agroecology has a proven track record of assessing the principles underpinning sustainable farming. Yet, approaches to utilizing research-based information to develop and deliver extension programs that allow innovative agricultural producers to make informed management decision are still lacking. In this webinar, we will explore pedagogical principles that Extension agents and agricultural educators can take advantage of when developing context-dependent outreach and educational programs for organic and sustainable farmers.

Slides from the webinar as a PDF handout

About the Presenters

Bruna Irene Grimberg is an Associate Research Professor dedicated to Science Outreach and Education at Montana State University. Bruna’s Physics and Education backgrounds allowed her to conduct research, develop and implement K-12 science teacher professional development in rural and Native American reservations, and teach university level courses in physics and science education. Her research explores how people learn science in different contexts and cultural settings aiming to increase science literacy.

Fabian Menalled is a Professor of Weed Ecology and Management at Montana State University. Fabian’s research and extension interests relate to the assessment of agroecological principles that relate to the development of sustainable farming practices.

Mary Burrows is an Associate Professor and Extension Plant Pathologist at Montana State University. Her research and extension programs address problems faced by the growers of Montana including integrated management of disease problems in field crops including cereals and pulses (peas, lentils, chickpeas). She directs the state diagnostic laboratory, a regional pulse crop diagnostic laboratory, and the state IPM program.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 12888

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_QDsn-3Zg4

Featuring

John Arena Jr., Arena Farms. Concord, MA.

Audio Text

This tractor is set up with cultivating disks for doing along the edges of plastic without the use of herbicides and very minimal hand weeding. This is set up with a straight tooth right here, it’s at a slight angle to get underneath the black plastic and also kind of lifts it up a little bit so any weeds that are germinating or small weeds that are there really get disturbed by that. Followed by a second round cultivating disk which again throws dirt out and disturbs the weeds. And the last disk here returns the soil back onto the plastic edge where this first one had taken it off a little bit.

All these tools here are simple cultivating tools; a straight tooth, it does have a spring if you have rocky fields; the tractor is a Super C Farmall from International Harvester. It’s a very simple operation.

We generally use this machine when weeds are just starting to germinate. That’s the best time to go in with that slight disruption of the ground. The small weeds just die instantly. If you do get behind however and weeds start to germinate and they get even up to six; we’ve even used this up to twelve inches in height. Because the round disks are there you get no clog up like you normally get on all straight teeth. So it’s great if you get in early and you happen to not get in early it’ll still do a great job. The only difference is you’d have to do weeds six to twelve inches in height you’d have to do your rows about six times to get a complete clean area whereas if you get in at the right time usually twice a year is about all that needs to be done. This particular field has been done twice.

What offers us also with this unit is we can put down fertilizer at the same time that we’re cultivating. So it works out that we’re getting a lot of things done with one pass.

This cultivation system also works great on crabgrass; it gets down below the root system, lifts it out and does kill it. The purslane also which generally is a problem weed for us, it does pull the weed out and if you do it on a hot enough day it generally will die before it has a chance to re-root itself in.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 5966

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6_qz1pXiEs

Featuring

Bob Gray, Four Corners Farm. Newbury, VT.

Audio Text

This cultivation equipment here is called a Buddingh In-row Weeder. The 'in-row' comes from the fact that it literally will weed around the plant. You can see my fingers here. The rubber fingers go like this around the plant and scrub the weeds out. And there’s little metal prongs on the bottom of the finger wheel that spins the fingers. On transplanted plants like strawberry or broccoli and even fast growing plants like beans it does a beautiful job. Onions in a single row, anything that can take a little bit of scrubbing without being pulled out.

Today this is just about the right timing to cultivate. The weeds are just coming through. This thing here will just take them and actually flick them out of the ground. If you let them get too big it won’t work. It has to be done when the weeds are an inch or less in height. Once you get past that stage then you get screwed up. We love it and it does an incredible job. It’s like getting fifteen people hoeing all at once and you’re just doing all the work yourself.

It’s mounted on an Allis Chalmers G tractor. They don’t make them anymore. They were made in the forties and early fifties. A little light weight tractor with the motor in the rear and you can see perfectly what you are doing. It turns on a dime.

For the actual adjustment on this Buddingh weeder, it does all kinds of things. It goes in and out, it goes forward and back, these rear things can be turned around so they’ll throw dirt in toward the plant or reversed so they’ll throw dirt away from the plant. It’s a very versatile piece of equipment.

One of the drawbacks is you can see right here it doesn’t like wet soil, but you shouldn’t be cultivating in the rain anyway, because the dirt will pack up underneath. You have to get off as well and bang on it to shake the dirt off so it will do what it is supposed to do. But in dry soil, sandy soil, it will work in stones as long as there are not too many of them.

Generally with this machine you go fairly slow, maybe two to three miles per hour, depending on the crop and how strong it is.

So we always have something in the front weeding around the plant and something in the back covering the wheel tracks. But it’s more than that. With the other tractors that have the Lillistons on them, the Lilliston can actually do more work than just covering the wheel tracks. The front cultivator, whatever it may be, a sweep or a shovel or fingers like, this works around the plant and the Lilliston can come around and finish up or level out or throw more dirt or hill depending on what you want to do. So you’re always trying to figure out what you want to do and put a piece of equipment that will do the most good.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA)

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 5965

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8INi3UIjObg

Featuring

Bob Gray, Four Corners Farm. Newbury, V

Audio Text

I want to talk about these cultivator sweeps and what they do but as I look here I want to remind you of something very important. You should never let your cultivator sweeps rust, and I always do because I seem to get too busy to clean them up. They’ll rust literally over night because of the acidity of the soil or something. Once they rust the dirt doesn’t slide smoothly over the cultivator, it boils over, so it doesn’t do nearly as nice a job of cultivating. You really want to slice just under the ground with a cultivator, an inch or half inch deep. Once you get dirt sticking to it, it begins to boil and roll and doesn’t do nearly as nice a job. That’s just because it rusted. It gets sticky. By rights they should be cleaned off every time you get through and oiled. And if you have rust on there it should be sanded until they’re really smooth. We have a problem where we don’t cultivate enough; we don’t have enough acreage at one time so that they get smoothed up. If you’re cultivating ten acres then by that time they’ll finally get all shiny and smooth. But here the rust lasts from one time to another.

We try to set these cultivator shanks, sweeps they’re called, so that they’ll throw dirt underneath the plant and bury up any weeds. Lots of times my dad used to say there are two ways to kill a weed, you know, you can cut it off or you can bury it up. I think sometimes burying up a weed is just as successful as actually digging it up. When you dig it up it still has a root. When you cover it up you smother it and it’s just not going to grow. So all you want to do is throw dirt over the weeds with your cultivator sweeps like this and bury them up. If you get them when they’re an inch or so tall it works very very well. So you can move these in or out so they do just what you want them to do.

Speed is important. The Lilliston likes to go fast, that’s the cultivator in the rear, and if you can go fast and not hit the plants with these why then it will work even better because it will throw the dirt more.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 5964

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3U2bEXISHk

Featuring

Bob Gray, Four Corners Farm. Newbury, VT

Audio Text

This piece of equipment here is a Lilliston Rolling Tine Cultivator and it’s a very versatile tillage tool because it adjusts so many ways and will do so many things. You can adjust it this way, like you want to hill potatoes. You can crank it up pretty steep and it will throw dirt up. You can adjust it back and forth this way for more action. If you want it to dig more and move more dirt then you turn this backwards. You can slide it this way to get it closer to the plants or further away from the plants. We like it a lot and use it on many many crops. Right here on broccoli we use it to actually throw dirt underneath the plant to bury weeds. We have the front sweeps on which will move the dirt under the plant and this will actually throw dirt behind and throw it over the plant. And if you watch your timing, if the weeds aren’t too big, you can keep this crop absolutely clean. I think I can get ninety nine percent of the weeds in this crop every time as long as I’m there when I’m supposed to be there.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 5963

This is a Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines video clip.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgHsWPZ5rx0

Featuring

Bob Gray, Four Corners Farm. Newbury, VT

Audio text

This machine we are using now is something we modified from a, well we got it from Canada, it’s a Canadian field cultivator they call it and we use it basically just for week control. We had to modify it from a larger size; actually these were wings that came from a fourteen foot model or something. Someone had sold the eight foot center portion and these are the outside wings - we had to weld it together and made it so it would fit between the rows of plastic.

When we lay down our plastic we always try to put our plastic just a tractor width or a little more apart. We use a lot of space between our plastic mainly just for weed control because we found when we had to do it by hand with a hoe or a hand push cultivator it just never got done. But if we can jump on a tractor we could easily do three, four, five acres in an afternoon or do ten lengths of plastic in a half an hour. And the advantage of this field cultivator over a tiller, we used to take the tiller and crank it up so it was really shallow and just cut the top two inches of the soil, it worked very well but it was slow. The beauty of this piece of equipment here is that you can adjust the depth and so we can use it as a primary tillage tool to loosen the soil and go six to eight inches deep if that’s what we want to do but when we’re controlling weeds we just want to skim the surface of the soil, the top two inches. And so with this adjusting wheel right here we can raise these tines up or down so they just barely skim because we don’t want to bring up more soil, we want to just sterilize the soil, the top two inches of soil and kill those weeds that are in that zone. So this is just simply a spring loaded or spring shank cultivator tooth, it vibrates, and creates a little more tillage action.

The thing I like the best is this reel in the back in that once you’ve broken the soil up there’s some clods of dirt just like this, that some weeds are actually growing in and by the time it gets through this thing rolling over it, it breaks it apart and exposes the root and literally hangs the weed up to dry and as you can see some of them hanging on the basket there. That’s important that you get the soil off the bare root of the small weed, and it’ll flip it over and lay it on top of the ground where the sun can bake it and kill it.

We’ve been trying to figure out a system for the edge of the plastic for as many years as we’ve used plastic. This is coming closer to what we want all the time. We used to use shovels, sweeps they call them, off the cultivator, but that would either go above the plastic and just skim along and not kill the weeds or go below the plastic and loosen it up and not kill the weeds either. We find with this we can run right over the top of the plastic and in fact sometimes I think it even stretches the plastic tighter and makes the plastic better because it will roll over the top and push little holes in it and punch it down further in the soil. So this is the zone, if you understand, on the edge of the plastic where the plastic curls down under where you secure it to the soil - there’s always a weed problem. Even with a hoe you end up tearing the plastic whereas this thing seems to go over and flick the weeds off, if they’re small. As I said, again these weeds are too big, we had a problem here and we missed them the first time through. Under ideal conditions if you time it right it works quite well.

This piece of equipment here actually came off a Lilliston Cultivator, some of your larger Lilliston setups have what they call an inner wheel, it’s a smaller spider wheel it runs very close to the plant. We just took it and modified it with the same hookup to this cultivator set up here. We’ve got an adjustment here so you can swivel it at an angle, the more angle you get the more action you get. We think it works pretty well.

I’ve got some weeds here in front of me and the time to get weeds is before you see them or just when they’re an inch or less tall because the root system isn’t very strong. By just flicking the dirt we can roll the soil over and get the weed exposed to the surface where it will die in a half an hour or less in the sun. Take a larger weed here, which is one we missed from the last cultivation. This weed has so much reserve of moisture and nutrients in the stalk itself that it will sacrifice that. That weed right there will not die in an hour in the sun, it may not die out all day in the sun. So you’ve missed it, once they get this big you’re in real trouble. It means hand work. So timing is everything. We always have problems, it rains four days in row and it’s warm and you can’t cultivate anyway, then the weeds get away from you.

I guess that leads me to another point, we have lots of cultivators and lots of tractors and I think you can almost never have too many. I like to have each piece of cultivation equipment on each tractor so I don’t have to stop and adjust and mount up because sometimes you don’t have the time to do that. It would be nice just to be able to jump from one tractor onto another one. It’s kind of extravagant but you can usually find a used tractor that if you don’t use it too heavily it will last for years. Just mount a certain piece of equipment on that tractor and get it set up perfectly and leave it.

This video project was funded in part by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (USDA).

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 5962

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czzwuaqO1ec

Introduction

In this video, we highlight research being funded by USDA-NIFA OREI program on Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs in Organic Farming Systems. 

The goal of this research has been to quantify who the main predators of BMSB egg masses are, the kinds of damage they cause, and  link the types of damage to specific predator groups. We have found that feeding damage by predators can be sorted into several different categories. These primarily depend on predator mouthpart morphology (e.g. the structures used for eating) and prey handling behavior (e.g. how predators eat their food).

More recently, this research has expanded to look at how different stages of BMSB have different communities of natural enemies. Ultimately, we hope to be able to better characterize the natural enemy community so that we can start designing landscapes to improve their effectiveness in managing BMSB.

Drs. Rob Morrison and Clarissa Mathews created the video, and Emily Fraser performed the narration. Research technician Brittany Poling made a guest appearance.

Video Transcript

When you think of insects, you might think of creepy crawlies infesting your home. But, not all insects are pests. In fact, many insects are beneficial and actually kill pests. These so-called "natural enemies" of pests are naturally-occurring predators or parasitoids that make their living by attacking various stages of other insects, and as a result, are beneficial to you and me.
Researchers studying an invasive pest from Asia, the brown marmorated stink bug, have been facing a dilemma. This smelly bug is a nuisance to homeowners and is wrecking havoc on farms across the mid-Atlantic region where it inserts its straw-like mouthparts into luscious fruits and vegetables, causing major economic losses. To better understand if our native natural enemies are starting to eat this invasive bug, researches have been placing eggs of the pest in agricultural crops and waiting to see what happens.

It was expected that parasitoids would attack the stink bug’s eggs. However, researchers have been noticing inexplicable damage to the eggs that is not caused by parasitoids. Increasingly, scientists have begun to think this damage may be caused by another natural enemy -- the predators.

Because it is not possible to watch the BMSB eggs while they are exposed in the field, we’ve embarked on a case of entomological whodunit. Think CSI meets Bill Nye. In the lab, we have been carefully photographing egg masses before allowing specific predators to feed, and then taking photographs afterwards to document specific types of damage caused by specific predator groups. This catalogue of photos will be helpful to ascribe certain types of egg damage we see in the field to specific predator groups and will help us quantify the impact of native predators in controlling BMSB populations.
Here are some highlights. It turns out that the way that a predator eats its dinner is important for the fate of an egg mass. Some predators, such as jumping spiders will completely remove an egg mass from the substrate, invert it, and eat the eggs individually, very slowly sucking the fluids out of the egg, with many of the eggs remaining after it is done.

Other predators, such as earwigs, are voracious and will mostly devour an egg mass, leaving only small fragments of egg shells, but still in the restricted area of the original egg mass. Yet other predators will pull off eggs individually, consume them, drop the remains elsewhere and repeat, such as ground beetles.

The damage caused to an egg mass, number of eggs affected, pattern of fragmentation, and sometimes whether an egg mass in the field is even present when retrieved, can all suggest a specific predator group. This information can be used by other researchers to get a better idea of the good work our native predators are doing to help control the invasive BMSB.
Our work has expanded more generally to understand how the native predator communities use different stages of BMSB. For instance, while assassin bugs won’t eat the eggs, they will readily attack the nymphs. Other predators, for example, the predatory spined soldier bug, eats eggs AND nymphs of the pest.

Ultimately, we hope this research will allow us to identify key predator groups, so we bolster these natural enemies in the field, and in the end, stop the stink bug invasion.
 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

eOrganic 16609

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAu712Lw8Vk

Video Transcript:

Carol Shennan: We try and address issues of pests and diseases and nutrients all in the same rotation systems, and that’s really what CalCORE—the core of CalCORE—is. And then we are also interested in the biological control of important pests, and most of that work focuses on either strawberry pests or pests of broccoli.

Chapter 1.1: Lygus Bug in Strawberry

Diego Nieto: Lygus bug is one of the two sort of key pests of strawberry in this region. If you look at the organic acreage in Santa Cruz County, it is worth about $23 million for strawberry. A conservative, very conservative, estimate for losses with respect to lygus damage is about 5%. That means annually there is over a million dollars of yield that is lost due to this particular pest just in organic strawberries in this county.

Tim Campion: The lygus bug feeds on the flower, and you can't visually see that the flower has been damaged until it starts developing into fruit and it will result in a fruit that they call cat-faced. It is kind of gnarled and unmarketable.

Jaime Lopez: The way we control our lygus bug and from the Extension’s outreach, is the best management practice right now is using vacuums, aspirators, that will come into the field and suck up the bugs and just grind them to pieces.

Chapter 1.2: Alfalfa Trap Crop: A Prevention, Scouting, & Management Tool

Diego Nieto: So lygus bug is a generalist feeding pest, which is to say that it doesn’t become problematic in strawberry because it loves strawberry, but rather because it is sort of available when the hillsides and all of the native plants have become dry as spring turns to summer. If we can utilize that polyphagous feeding behavior and take advantage of it by providing a plant host that is in fact preferred, then you can prevent pest establishment in a strawberry field. And of course with organic agriculture, prevention is steps 1, 2, and 3 in a good pest management program. So what we have done is implement alfalfa trap crops to attract lygus bugs.

In addition to the preventative component, alfalfa trap-cropping also provides a very efficient and effective means of scouting and management. So rather than scouting a very large strawberry field, with alfalfa trap crops you know exactly where to look. With respect to management, again there is lots of efficiency built into the system. The lygus bug pest pressure tends to be concentrated in this little three-row universe, which is one alfalfa trap crop and then the immediately adjacent strawberry row on either side. So these tractor-mounted vacuums can go through the three-row area and get the majority of lygus bugs and you can in that way conserve the beneficial insects, the predators, and the parasitoids that are in those strawberries.

Chapter 1.3: Identifying Lygus Bug Predators

Diego Nieto: Part of the aim here was to distinguish, identify, and characterize how predators operated in this trap crop system. So we were able to collect predators in commercial strawberry and look at their gut contents to see which ones had actually consumed lygus bug. We were able to identify 14 different predator groups that we found evidence of lygus predation. This included 8 different types of spiders, 3 true bugs, and 2 beetles. So there is a very big predator community that is in strawberry that is consuming lygus bug.

Chapter 1.4: Increased Predation Rates in Alfalfa Trap Crops

Diego Nieto: We were able to collect a significant amount of evidence that predation increases with increased prey abundance in alfalfa relative to strawberry.

Ultimately, when you look at yield in strawberry that are adjacent or associated with alfalfa trap crops compared to strawberry by themselves, what's exciting is you do get a yield improvement. So there is definitely an economic benefit to alfalfa trap crops.

Chapter 2.1: Cabbage Aphid in Brassicas: Improving Knowledge of the Beneficial Syrphid Community

Steve Pedersen: As far as brassicas are concerned, the cabbage aphid is by far the number one problem.

Diego Nieto: If you unofficially survey growers who deal with this pest on a routine basis, it sounds like there is about 15% yield loss in the form of contamination where these aphids get into the florets or the heads of a particular brassica.

More often than not the syrphid community will come in in a timely fashion and will effectively manage these cabbage aphid communities. But there is inconsistency and unpredictability with how these syrphids move in in terms of the quantity or the timeliness of their establishment. So the timing of when syrphids come in and establish in a field ends up being incredibly important and influential to the ultimate yield outcome of a particular organic brassica crop.

Some of our goals with respect to cabbage aphid and the syrphid community that is found in cole crops on the Central Coast involves distinguishing and characterizing the species in that syrphid community, determining how they interact with the timing of a broccoli growing season, particular aphid densities, how they complement possibly one another with those dynamics, and then to try and illustrate, communicate how those species operate—making sure people understand the differences between one species versus another and especially those species versus caterpillars so that no one is confusing a beneficial insect with a pest.

I think the management implications might be tailoring beneficial insectary habitats that have the most utility for these particular species. Some of these species they vary from smaller flies to larger flies and correspondingly from smaller larvae to larger larvae and so it is important to figure out which flowers—the flower types, the flower shapes, how accessible the nectar and pollen is—how that corresponds to particular syrphid species to make sure that we are getting the full benefit out of these insectary habitats.

Steve Pedersen: Identifying the roles of specific predators in organic systems is very exciting and that’s a really neat component of the CalCORE project.

 

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This eOrganic video was created by members of a project of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (NIFA OREI) entitled Value Added Grains for Local and Regional Food Systems. Information was provided by Elizabeth Dyck of the Organic Growers Research and Information Sharing Network (OGRIN), Frank Kutka of the Northern Plains Sustainable Ag Society (NPSAS), and Steve Zwinger of North Dakota State University.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA0nLfh-m0w

Video Transcript

The ancient hulled wheats spelt, emmer, and einkorn are sought by consumers and chefs alike for their distinct flavor, nutritional properties, and the intrigue of eating a meal that has sustained humans since ancient times.

Einkorn, emmer, and spelt differ from modern wheat in that they largely do not thresh free of their hulls in the combining process. An additional step called dehulling is needed to remove hulls.

Chapter 1: Why Grow These Ancient Hulled Wheats?

Through direct marketing, farmers are able to sell wheat kernels and flours from these hulled wheats at a high price per pound to chefs, bakers, and consumers. Additionally, hulled wheat still in the hull can be marketed as animal feed, while empty hulls can be sold as animal bedding.

The hulled wheats also have characteristics that make them highly compatible with sustainable and organic production.

The hulled wheats have traditionally been grown under lower fertility conditions than modern wheat. In fact, high nitrogen fertility can cause lodging in these crops. Although more research is needed, a good rule of thumb is to plant einkorn and emmer with no more than 50%–75% of the nitrogen required for modern wheat. Winter spelt can be fertilized as winter modern wheat without the additional spring topdressing.

The hulled wheats also show tolerance to environmental stresses. Winter spelt has shown cold tolerance, and some einkorn varieties have salinity tolerance. Emmer tends to be more drought tolerant than modern wheat, and spring emmer more competitive against weeds. Emmer germplasm also contains many genes that are valuable in breeding for disease resistance.

In terms of production, spelt yields in the hull are comparable to or slightly lower than that of modern wheat. Recent research on spring emmer and einkorn suggests that yields can vary by location and management. In North Dakota, research shows that spring emmer and einkorn yields in the hull can be higher than modern spring wheat yields. In contrast, in research trials conducted in New York and Pennsylvania, yield of spring emmer and einkorn in the hull varied from 35%–93% of modern spring wheat.

Chapter 2: How to Grow Hulled Wheats

As with modern wheat, there are spring and winter varieties of spelt, emmer, and einkorn. A good starting point to grow hulled wheats is to use best management practices for modern wheat in your region, including good seedbed preparation, timely planting, and timely harvest to preserve grain quality. These hulled wheats tend to be taller and have higher rates of lodging than modern wheat. In addition to avoiding excessive nitrogen, to reduce lodging use lower planting rates for emmer and einkorn than for modern wheat.

Emmer and einkorn need to be planted in their hulls to get adequate germination. Spelt can be planted in or out of the hull. Research trials have shown a rate of 100 pounds per acre to be suitable for spring emmer and einkorn. Research is needed to determine rates for winter emmer and einkorn, although farmer experience suggests that even lower planting rates, such as 80 pounds per acre or lower, may be used. Spelt planting rate depends on whether it is planted in or out of the hull. For example, in Pennsylvania, farmers plant spelt at about 120 pounds per acre when dehulled, and about 150 pounds per acre when in the hull.

Chapter 3: Special Planting Considerations

Planting einkorn, emmer, and spelt in their hulls has challenges. The hulled seeds can clog seeding equipment, which results in skips in the field. This is due to the hairs and awns on the hulls, along with the larger size of the seed in the hull.

There are various ways to accommodate these seed characteristics in planting. Well-executed combining can remove most of the awns from the seeds. A debearder can be used to remove the hairs and awns and break up doubles before seeding. Seeding equipment may be modified to accommodate the seed characteristics, or the seed can be broadcast.

Certain varieties, such as winter emmer, have very large seeds. These larger seeds may require broadcast seeding or double planting.

Chapter 4: Dehulling Systems

A percent of the harvest of hulled wheats will dehull in the combine or thresher, but an additional dehulling and cleaning process is required to extract maximum yield and to create an edible and marketable product.

The ease of dehulling will vary depending on the species, variety, and growing conditions. For example, spelt tends to be easier to dehull than emmer or einkorn. The spelt variety Maverick is easier to dehull than others, such as Oberkulmer. Well-dried grain and low humidity are required for highest dehulling efficiency.

There are two main types of dehullers, impact and friction. In an impact dehuller, the hulled grain is thrown at high speed against a hard surface or impact ring. As the grain hits the surface, the kernel is separated from the hull. Several commercial impact dehullers are available.

In friction dehullers, the kernel is rubbed loose from the hull using one of several mechanisms. One method is to rub the grain against a rubber surface. Farmers have made very low-cost friction dehullers by replacing one or both of the metal plates in a burr mill with a rubber disk. Another farmer-built dehuller uses sections of combine rasp bars mounted on a drum to dehull grains. Yet another method of friction dehulling is to force the hulled grain through a mesh screen.

In addition to the dehuller an air column, or aspirator, is used to blow off empty hulls. A separator is used to sort dehulled kernels from those still in the hull. A commonly used separator is a gravity table. Both a separator and an aspirator are necessary to achieve a high-quality product. Some dehullers such as the Nigel Tudor model include an aspirator. The Horn friction dehuller includes both an aspirator and a gravity table.

The ancient hulled wheats, spelt, emmer, and einkorn are potentially high-value food crops that could fit well into an organic farming system. They require careful management and an extra processing step called dehulling to ready them for market.

To learn more about growing, processing, and marketing the ancient hulled wheats, visit these sites: http://www.ogrin.org, http://www.npsas.org, and https://www.grownyc.org/grains.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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This video was created by John Anderson and Kathy Bielek of the Ohio State University, who are participants in the NIFA OREI funded project: A Whole Farm Approach to Incorporating Pasture Raised Organic Poultry and a Novel Cereal Grain (Naked Oats) into a Multi-year Organic Rotation. In the video, John speaks with Cara and Jason Tipton of Tea Hills Poultry.

Watch the video clip on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDCHtlxEO2k

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm John Anderson from the Department of Animal Sciences at The Ohio State University. As part of our project on incorporating pasture-raised organic poultry and naked oats into an organic rotation, we had three producer-cooperators assess our naked oats diet in their production system for two years using both commercial broilers and red broilers. We spoke with cooperators Cara and Jason Tipton of Tea Hills Poultry.

Cara: We are a sixth-generation family farm in Loudonville, Ohio. We have a grain farm as well as meat birds and an on-farm processing facility. The poultry end is done on about 15 acres.

Jason: We do about 10,000 market birds a year. We have about 400 layers right now, we raise about 1,000 turkeys a year for Thanksgiving, and we do about 500 ducks a year.

John: The main goal of this project is to assess the feasibility of incorporating naked oats, also called hulless oats, into a multi-year crop rotation, with the naked oats then used as a major part of the poultry feed.

When compared to conventional oats, the hulless varieties have less crude fiber and a significant increase in both protein and lipid content. Hulless oats can replace all of the corn and some of the soy in a poultry diet and still produce acceptable growth rates for most pastured-poultry producers.

Another objective for this project was to have organic poultry producers assess the suitability of our naked oats and soy diet. We asked the Tiptons, how does the naked oat/soy diet compare with your usual broiler ration?

Cara: They performed pretty equally against each other. I think their rate of gain looks pretty comparable to what we feed already.

John: An additional goal was for the producer-cooperators to evaluate the relative merits of two different types of broilers—commercial broilers and a slower growing type often used on pasture called Red Rangers, red broilers, or just red bros. The Tiptons typically raise both white and red broilers, and we asked how the red birds compared to the commercial broilers as far as their behavior on pasture.

Jason: With the red bros they just seem more aware of their surroundings and they get up, they move. As soon as you move those shelters, they just go at it. So every one of the birds have green in their mouth, it seems like, as soon as you move them.

John: The red birds are slower growing, taking about two weeks longer to finish, and have a different carcass shape.

John: So marketing organic birds is relatively new for you, or have you marketed organic birds in the past?

Cara: We do have people ask occasionally if they're certified organic and when we tell them how we raise them, I think the more important thing to them is that they're raised on pasture and they're allowed to be outside and are fed an all natural feed. But, when we sell a product to a store, the organic label speaks volumes since we're not there to tell how we raise the birds. You know, it has an identity and a description on how it's raised just from the label, so it's definitely been a popular item in stores.

John: But you've been satisfied with the birds you ate? The oats fed ration?

Cara: Absolutely.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Watch this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxHs2eM7YzY&t=28s

Chapter 1: The Threat of Soilborne Disease to California's Strawberry Industry

Mark Bolda: I think in many ways the soilborne diseases are probably the most constraining of the diseases and pests that we face in strawberries. Watsonville is a community that is supported by the strawberry industry. If as an industry we start to lose farms because we can't handle these soilborne diseases, that would be a tragedy.

Joji Muramoto: In this area, thanks to the climate, strawberry harvest usually starts in late March and continues until October or even November. But if plants have soilborne diseases, harvest can finish in June or July—so that is very big damage for growers. There are three major soilborne diseases of strawberries in California: Verticillium dahliae, the pathogen that causes Verticillium wilt; Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum; and charcoal root rot caused by Macrophomina phaseolina.

 

Steve Pederson: Verticillium is probably the number one most problematic soilborne disease. The problem with being a diversified organic grower is that we grow lots of vegetables that are potential hosts.

Chapter 2: Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD): Principles and Mechanics

Joji Muramoto: Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation, known as ASD, is a biological process that can control a range of soilborne pathogens using the principle of acid fermentation. There are three steps to doing ASD. The first step is to apply a readily decomposable carbon source to the soil, which increases the microbial activity in a very short period of time. Then we cover the soil with plastic. Then we use drip tape to saturate the pore space with water, which starts the anaerobic digestion of the carbon source we incorporated. We usually leave it for three weeks, during which anaerobic decomposition, like a fermentation process, takes place.

Carol Shennan: These fermentation processes are the key to a lot of the disease suppression that we get with ASD. When there is no oxygen in the soil, bacteria have to use other pathways than the normal respiration pathways to break down the carbon. And there are various byproducts produced—organic acids, volatiles—that are toxic to certain pathogens and pests. Different microbes flourish under that new environment. Not only is it different, but there are actually more bacteria and more fungi than we started with. So it’s not sterilizing the soil in any way—in fact we’re creating more biological activity in it—it’s just a different kind of community. One of the interesting things about that, is that it seems like that may confer some ability of the soil to resist future disease. It’s great to be able to control something immediately, but it’s even better if you can make a soil that’s more resistant to reinfection down the road. 

Chapter 3: ASD: A Biological Process

Carol Shennan: With ASD, we are relying on the soil microbial community to do the work for us and they require particular conditions. We have to be careful about the soil temperatures when we do ASD. For certain pathogens like Verticillium, soil temperatures of around 70-75 degrees F are fine, but for other pathogens like Fusarium wilt, you need to have much higher soil temperatures for ASD to effectively control it. We have even found that the carbon source may be important—some carbon sources are better able to control a particular pathogen than another. How to manage the water to get good anaerobic conditions is going to be different if you have a heavy soil than if you have a more sandy soil.

That’s where we are with the ASD work at this point—we know that it can work for some things in some places, and now we are trying to work out how to optimize it for particular locations and particular pathogens.

Chapter 4: ASD: Growth & Challenges

Carol Shennan: Four or five years ago we had maybe 1 or 2 acres being tested. In the fall of 2014 we had 1,000 acres—which is a huge growth rate—and that wouldn’t have been possible without the partnership that we built from the beginning with a local company called Farm Fuel who imports all the carbon material, and they also provide technical assistance to the growers on how to do ASD. That has been really important—having that capacity to scale up.

Tim Campion: The potential of ASD that we have seen is favorable results with increase in yields in the plants, and overall health of the plants. It is pretty obvious just looking out in the field—comparing the ASD plants with the rows right next to it—the vigor of the plants and the health, and the stronger plants, better pest-resistance and disease-resistance. One concern is the cost with the increased labor and materials.

Jaime Lopez: Our first year doing ASD was only a 5-acre test plot and each year it has doubled. Right now we are at about 120 acres and we are about to add more acres in our other districts. The hurdles that we have when applying ASD is that we have a very scarce labor force. So trying to have a turnaround time of one week incorporating the ASD into the soil—putting the mulch, putting the drip tape, irrigating within a week’s time—I think is one of the biggest issues that we have.

Carol Shennan: The most successful growers with ASD start off doing it on a small area, working out the kinks and then scaling it up. Because it is a lot, you need to be able to have a way to get the carbon into the soil, get the beds made, and get the plastic on and apply the water as quickly as possible. Otherwise, that carbon is broken down aerobically, which won’t have the benefits.

There are a lot of mechanics to work out. We really recommend that growers talk to other farmers who are doing it, about how they have been able to get it to work, and then try it in a small area first.

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Watch this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_1UbP8IvEk

CalCORE: Connecting California Farmers and Scientists to Improve Rotational Strawberry and Vegetable Systems

Joji Muramoto: When I started to do research and soil testing for farmers, when I saw they appreciated the data I provided, I realized, "Oh, I can do something for them. Doing something useful for farming...that has been my passion."

Diego Nieto: In this region there is a very broad organic industry thatincludes both the large corporate growers and also the small-scale diversified growers. There are 49,000 acres of certified organic ground in two counties [Santa Cruz and Monterey] that is valued at close to $367 million. Seventy-five percent of the organic strawberries that are grown in California are grown in these two counties. So it is really a nice hot spot to do organic sustainable research in strawberry.

Goal 1: Building the CalCORE Network

Carol Shennan: The acronym CalCORE stands for California Collaborative Organic Research and Extension network. We have now, I think, more than 15 growers involved in one way or another with the network, plus many extension agents, and local organizations and industry people, as well as researchers from half a dozen different places.

Tim Campion: It has been a great collaboration. We pick up new information from them and they are always well organized and informative.

Steve Pedersen: I think the community elements of the CalCORE trial has been one of the major benefits for me. Some really good nuggets of information you'll pick up just standing on the sidelines and talking to people. And also being introduced to all the different researchers has been really valuable.

Carol Shennan: We have made a special effort to try and involve the Spanish-speaking farming community in the project by working with the organization ALBA, The Agricultural Land Based Association, who work to help farmworkers become organic farmers.

Nathan Harkleroad: It has been really important to do outreach to the Latino communities because so many Latinos are owners and operators of farms in our region, and particularly strawberries.

Goal 2: Researching Integrated Systems to Manage Fertility, Disease and Pests

Carol Shennan: The main research goal is to look at developing rotation systems that are both economic but also have a smaller environmental footprint as possible.Where we try to address issues of pests, and diseases and nutrients all in the same rotations, and that is really what the core of calCORE is.

There are a number of specific questions we are trying to ask. The first one is about length of rotation: How often can you grow strawberries? And, how do the particular crops you grow in rotation affect the health of the strawberries? Particularly in terms of disease management, because that is the main limitation for organic strawberries in many cases, is soilborne diseases.

Steve Pedersen: Our strawberries are by far our largest earning crop per acre, so most of our crop planning is centered around setting things up for a good strawberry crop. We have to be really careful in our rotations choosing where to grow things; a lot of the vegetables that we grow turn out to be hosts for verticillium in particular.

Carol Shennan: The secondary goal is to look at the use of anaerobic soil disinfestation or the addition of mustard seed meals as strategies for controlling disease. Each of those affects fertility, so we are also doing a lot of measurements of soil fertility. We are also interested in the biological control of important pests.

We ended up with quite a complicated study. One of the ways we've tried to cope with that and still get realistic information from the farms is that we are using something that is called a mother-baby design, where we have a big mother experiment where we do all the replications. And then the growers in the group decided on a subset of those treatments to test on their own farms, and those are the baby trials which we now have on 6 different farms.

Jaime Lopez: CalCORE has really helped us with learning more about new processes or better practices for organics. It has helped us in grounds where we do have high amounts of soil diseases, and it has helped us to suppress those soil diseases to have a better production.

Rigoberto Bucio: Now with this project for which I was fortunate enough to be invited, I have learned it is necessary to do soil analysis, and to carry things out in an orderly way. I learned that sometimes if we don't do soil analysis, we unknowingly apply too much fertilizer.

Steve Pedersen: There are some pretty major benefits. And one of those, and it has been reinforced by the CalCORE experiments, is the importance of using broccoli as a rotational crop for strawberries, which is something we do pretty much across the board now. And getting introduced to the concept of ASD, anaerobic soil disinfestation, is another one and I think that shows great promise.

Carol Shennan: You really have to have the perspective of the farmers because they know their systems in ways that as a researcher I can never know. I can get really excited about some basic science questions, don’t get me wrong, but my real passion is how can we use scientific knowledge to help improve the productivity, ecology; and the human dimensions of our agricultural systems.

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Watch this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRvonR1lSsI

Video Transcript

Organic growers are facing many challenges limiting their production of cucumbers, melons and squash. If you have ever tried to grow these crops in the eastern United States, you've probably had to deal with aphids, striped cucumber beetles, or downy mildew, but now there's hope. A NIFA-OREI grant known as ESOCuc, the Eastern Sustainable Organic Cucurbit Project, addresses these issues. ESOCuc is a collaboration of growers, extension agents, and university researchers working together to find solutions for you.

The ESOCuc project has four objectives:

• To evaluate the most popular varieties so growers can access updated information on yield and disease resistance
• To breed new varieties, guided by grower input, which will be made available through organic seed distributors
• To examine and improve management strategies to tell you what works against these pests and what doesn’t
• Finally, to make all this information readily available through online resources, webinars, and field days

For the past several decades, the seed industry has focused most of its attention on developing varieties for conventional farms. There has been little breeding specifically for the needs of organic farmers. It is clear that we must work directly with organic growers to solve this issue. As part of ESOCuc, we are evaluating popular cucurbit varieties to compare their performance in an organic environment, on research farms as well as collaborating organic production farms.

The Organic Variety Trial Database is currently available for finding information on potential variety choices. With our trials, we are looking to improve this resource to include precise measurements of varietal susceptibility to viruses, downy mildew, and striped cucumber beetles so that you can be well informed about what you are getting. Along with the trials run by Cornell Cooperative Extension in NY, Jeanine Davis is leading a set of evaluations at the Mountain Research Station in North Carolina and John Murphy is leading another set in Auburn, Alabama.

One focus of ESOCuc is controlling aphid-vectored viruses. When virus pressure increases in the early summer, growers may lose their whole crop. Even with the use OMRI-approved pesticides, aphids can still transmit viruses before the pesticide kills them. This has been an ongoing problem in the Southeast, but thanks to climate change, the Northeast may soon face these viruses as well. John Murphy of Auburn University and his team are developing a planting strategy that removes the virus from the aphids as they feed, reducing the risk of virus transmission into your fields. This strategy will be described on the eOrganic website and demonstrated at field days in Alabama.

Downy mildew is a wind-transmitted pathogen that affects all cucurbits. As you may already know, susceptible varieties can become completely defoliated within weeks of the disease arriving in the field. Cucurbit growers haven’t been overwhelmed by downy mildew for decades, but now new strains are on the rise. This new downy mildew has overcome previously resistant varieties and we need new strategies to combat it.

On the CDM-IpmPIPE disease prediction software, we can observe the disease patterns as downy mildew moves up the coast with tropical storms, and with winds from the west. CDM-IpmPIPE relies on reports from growers like you to track the movement of downy mildew. The more people use this resource, the more accurately users can anticipate the disease's arrival and determine when to start using OMRI-approved pesticides. Peter Ojiambo at North Carolina State University is working to make this system even better and more accurately forecast chemical control needs. We hope that you will become one of the growers that uses this resource.

In addition to evaluating varieties for resistance in the field, we will perform trials inside high tunnels to test drier environments that are less hospitable to the disease. You will have access to information about these control strategies as we pull together the data from management trials.

Striped cucumber beetles feed on the leaves, roots, and fruit of cucurbits—damaging plants and decreasing marketability. They can also spread bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus between plants. The availability of systemic pesticides for conventional growers has really limited the investment in developing tools for organic systems. We’re working to close that gap.

In addition to looking at the economics of physical barriers like row covers, we’ll be providing enhanced trap-cropping strategies based on an understanding of what attracts beetles to cucurbits in the first place. We have noticed beetles have strong preferences for certain cultivars so we can direct breeding to incorporate low beetle preference. We will be able to accurately describe varietal susceptibility to beetle damage, making it easy for you to select the right strategy for your farm.

Popular cucurbit cultivars with consumer-desired characteristics often lack genetic resistance to pests. We’re working to develop cucumber, melon and squash cultivars that are open-pollinated, regionally adapted, tolerant to pests, flavorful, and prolific. A key to making this process work is grower input. We use surveys at meetings and conferences, needs assessments by the Organic Seed Alliance, and the direct feedback we get through on-farm evaluations of developing varieties. You can help guide this process by participating in these surveys to let us know what’s important to you. Outreach and extension are vital to this project’s success. All the work we’ve described is focused on grower needs, so success is dependent on our collaboration.

Our research will engage farmers and extension educators as active participants through on-farm trials, demonstrations, field days, workshops, and regional meetings. We encourage your continued feedback and even if you’re unable to attend one of these events, we hope you’ll find the information on cultivars, management strategies, and economics on eOrganic useful on your farm.

If you've seen cucurbit downy mildew on your farm, or are interested in learning how to recognize it, please consider participating in the CDM-IpmPIPE. The grower you help just might be yourself! To learn more about the ESOCuc project, visit the website or contact your local extension office for field day and meeting information. To receive updates on eOrganic/eXtension webinars relating to this research, sign up for the eOrganic newsletter at http://eOrganic.info.

Additional Resources

• Cucumber Downy Mildew Forecast (CDM-IpmPIPE). Available at: http://cdm.ipmpipe.org/
• EsoCuc Website: Organic Cucurbit Research: Critical Pest Management Challenges. Available at: http://eOrganic.info/cucurbits
• Organic Variety Trial Database: Available at: http://varietytrials.eorganic.info/

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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Watch this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Yq-2Rl3m0

Introduction

This is a Penn State Farm Profiles Video, directed by Tianna DuPont and produced by Daniel Paashaus. This series of videos is designed to give new farmers ideas and advice from experienced producers. Video production is supported by funding from the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA, Grant #2009-49400-05869.

Featuring

John Good, Quiet Creek Farm. John and Aimee Good run Quiet Creek Farm, a 200-member certified organic CSA at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA. In this video, John Good discusses pest management strategies and practices on this farm, including the use of row covers, succession planting and spraying of organic pest control products.

Audio Text

Closed captions are also available by clicking the "CC" link in the lower right of the video frame which appear when you play the video.

The three pests that we spend the most time managing are flea beetles, cucumber beetles and cabbage worms. There are a few other pests that are occasionally an issue, but those are the ones I would say that we have to spend time and energy on controlling the most year after year. The biggest thing with any pest control is rotation. So we try to make sure that any crop in one family does not appear again in the same field for three years. And if possible, we try to move them as far away in the field physically as we can--particularly if it was a bad pest year and we are worried about that the following season. So I would say rotation is your number one cultural practice.

And the other cultural practice if you are dealing with transplanted crops, (and we do have some transplanted brassica crops, broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage and some of our kale) is you can grow really healthy transplants in a really good potting mix and give your plants a really good start, and that gives them a big advantage. Also weed control is important, and providing adequate water. Anything you can do to make your plant’s life easier will help them deal with pests more effectively.
Row covers are a primary tool for flea beetles. We use them on all of our Asian brassica greens, arugula, tat soi, and baby kale. We also cover all of our larger brassicas; cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower at planting. Also, we have to control flea beetles on eggplant. So we also cover those at planting, too.

Row covers are tremendously effective if they are used well, and you do a good job of keeping them down. That will give you fairly good flea beetle control. We store all our row covers. We use 250 foot long pieces. That is how long our beds are. We use those that will cover one bed or two beds at a time. We store them on 10 foot long 2 inch PVC pipe pieces. We keep them rolled up tight on there. And then it is very easy to put the row cover down. We will go out to the field. We can put a single peg in the beginning to just hold the row cover in place. And then a person can just grab each end of the PVC pipe and walk out and your row cover is in place. If it is particularly windy, you can put a peg down to fasten it in place while you do it. If it is a double wide row cover on that ten foot pipe it is just folded in half. So it fits on there. Then after we put the row cover down we fold over the edge and put in a peg, generally every ten feet. We like three pronged plastic pegs. They are the strongest. You generally do need a rubber mallet to drive them in. And it takes a little practice to get good with them. But we will do those approximately every ten feet the length of the row cover. We will pull tension first lengthwise on the row and if we are going over hoops we will also pull tension across from the person working on the other side to make them nice and tight across the hoops. The other really nice thing about storing on pipes, besides storage, labeling-- all those things are really helpful--is that it is very easy to take up. We have come up with a system where when we go to take up a row cover we have a set of two portable saw horses we put at the end of the field, and they have a pair of pipe strappings. We feed our pvc pipe through those so it is fastened to the saw horse on either side. We pull up all the pegs out of the row cover. If it is a double wide row cover we will fold it in half at that point. It generally takes three people to do this. We pull it up to the saw horses and wrap the row cover on the pipe once or twice. Then we built a pvc crank. It just looks like a spool, a handle that you would use to crank anything really. We just tap that in place with our hands. Then one person cranks and begins rolling in the row cover and the other two people hold the sides to make sure it rolls in really nice and tightly on the pipe. You do have to be careful with row cover on brassica greens because humidity can be an issue. If plants are quite large under the row cover and it is a fairly wet time period you can get trouble with both rot, because it is really wet, or we have trouble with aphids or white fly larvae under the row cover. For the white fly larvae we usually have those on the Asian turnips or radishes. We find that as long as you uncover them about a week before they are ready to be picked the air moving through the crop will prevent any damage.

For something like eggplant, we really determine the pressure visually when the leaves are starting to look like Swiss cheese, and when you can see a flea beetle. That means they are getting big and eating a lot of your plants. When they are small they are very hard to see but when you start to notice them visually it is really time to takes some action. But again generally by the time the eggplant is uncovered and flowering their growth will really outpace the damage they do until usually late in the fall when the season ends. And by then, we are usually not that concerned about them anymore.

We have cucumber beetle pressure on basically anything that is in the cucumber family. Whether it be summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, melons and watermelons, winter squash. I believe that is it. Basically that family of crops is what will be affected. Cucumber beetles themselves generally do not cause a lot of damage to the crops. What they are very good at, is transporting diseases from planting to planting. We do sometimes find them to be actually physically destructive early in the season on our young cucurbits like young zucchini or young cucumbers. For that reason we usually keep those crops covered and also to protect them from the frost damage early in the season, and just cold damage in general. By the time we uncover them they are usually big enough to withstand the pressure there may be. But I have seen cucumber beetle pressure to the point where they will actually destroy the plant. At that point then we will use Surround more as the control. Surround is a kaolin clay product you mix into suspension with water and you spray to coat the entire leaf surface of the plants.

We just use back pack sprayer, a hand pump back pack sprayer for spraying our Surround. Coverage is a little hard to see. It is white, the spray, so it gives you a little bit of an idea what you have gotten and haven’t gotten. The underside of the leaves is difficult to get. The only thing you can do is just try to keep the wand moving a lot. You do your best to get under the leaves of the plant and to keep the wand moving a lot. But again we are trying to move pretty quickly so you have to do the best as you can as quickly as you can. You don’t have to completely cover every square inch of the leaves to have it be fairly effective. The way surround works is that after the plant is coated in the white clay kaolin clay substance that then forms a barrier and when cucumber beetles and basically any insect lands on the plant they basically get covered in the powder. Cucumber beetles and insects breathe through their skin and they find this irritating. And the way we describe this is that they actually spend excessive time grooming, actually trying to clean the residue off their skin and they just become sort of disgusted and move away. And believe it or not it actually works rather effectively. And it is nice for that reason because you are not using a pesticide that is broad spectrum thing that is killing the insects. It is actually just annoying them until they go somewhere else and they leave you alone.

And beyond with several of the cucumber crops; with cucumbers, zucchini squash and melons we will plant successions of as well. We generally plant cucumbers and zucchini every three to four weeks. And it is not so much because of the cucumber beetles it is just that the plants seem to become exhausted, as well as the beetles start to spread diseases as well as us picking starts to spread diseases through the patch.

So, it is good to have a fresh batch coming on line every three to four weeks and then you can till in the previous planting, preferably as quickly as possible. And then move onto the next. The important thing to remember when you are doing succession planting is when you have successions overlap and you are picking make sure you pick in the newest patch first and work your way back into the older plantings. That way you are not carrying either pests or diseases from the older plantings into your brand new nice looking plants.

For cabbage worms again rotation is also an important control and again the crops like brassicas again are one we transplant. So it is important to grow really strong healthy transplants. Those are the main cultural controls--growing good transplants and rotation. For cabbage worm we use Bt. Bacillus thuringensis. The kurstaki variety is the one most effective for controlling cabbage worm. In terms of using Bt as a control on brassicas, we don’t really worry about cabbage worms having an effect on the health of the crop. It is almost more of an aesthetic effect in particular in broccoli heads. But also it can be a problem in winter kale, large kale and cabbage where the worms will either want to chew holes in the heads in the case of kale or cabbage. Where in broccoli there is just green worms all peppered throughout the head. They don’t really cause a lot of damage. But when you go home and put them in the pot a whole bunch of green worms float to the top. So it is mostly keeping our customers happy, is why we use Bt to control cabbage worms. We use a couple basic measures to decide when it is time to spray Bt in terms of controlling cabbage worms. The first is just visually. You can look and see when there are a lot of white cabbage moths in your field. Some years the instance you transplant you start to see cabbage moths and landing on your transplants and laying their eggs immediately. Other years, just because of natural population fluctuations there is not that many around and it is not a real severe problem. In general for us we are just treating the crop prior to harvest. For broccoli or cauliflower a week or two before we are going to harvest we generally spray just the heads and surrounding area. We are not covering the whole plant. We are just spraying the area that our customers are going to get and we don’t want the worms to be in. And what happens then is the cabbage worms then feed on the crop and they then ingest the Bt and it actually ruptures their intestinal track, is basically how I understand it and they will die.

Again with Bt I would recommend, and with any spray, to read the label that comes in the bag. I think the most dangerous part of working with Bt is working with the concentrate when you are mixing the mix. It is always good to wear gloves and it is always good to wear long protective clothing and I believe they also recommend that you remove that clothing after you are done spraying. Do your best to keep it off of you and your clothes as much as possible.

Our best way of knowing what sort of pest pressure we are getting to is by getting out there and walking the field. The best management you can do for anything on your farm is to get out there and walk around all of it. So get out and take a good look at all your crops. Walk an entire row, walk a few different rows. To see what kind of pressure whether it is pests or diseases or if something just needs water. We have always gone by the philosophy the best fertilizer on the farm is the farmer’s footsteps. So if you can get out there within your crops and really check it out you can really make some good management decisions.
In general dealing with insects and pest management organically is not particularly difficult as long as you are prepared. You want to take note of the crops you are growing and what are their significant pests and develop a plan before the season to be able to manage them when the trouble comes. If it turns out that in that year you don’t have any pest or disease pressure and you don’t have to use whatever methods you devised that is great at least you are prepared for next season. But being prepared and doing your research ahead of time is probably the most important thing you can do in terms of controlling the pests on your farm.
 

 

 

This is an eOrganic article and was reviewed for compliance with National Organic Program regulations by members of the eOrganic community. Always check with your organic certification agency before adopting new practices or using new materials. For more information, refer to eOrganic's articles on organic certification.

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