Farm Calls: Evidence-Based Agriculture and Full Moon Frosts

This week, Morris County Ag Agent Pete Nitzsche comments that North Jersey spring temperatures have farmers discussing the relationship between the occurrence of a full moon and frost.
There's good reason for concern. As Dave Robinson reports in his May 4, 2013 summary,

...low temperatures were at or below freezing at one or more locations on 16 April days. Six days saw a location fall to 25° or colder. The first of these days was the 2nd, when cold air drainage resulted in the valley locations of Walpack (Sussex) dropping to 18° and Pequest (Warren) 20°. On the 3rd, Pequest reached 21° and Kingwood (Hunterdon) 22°.

Radiation frosts happen when freezing conditions occur on clear nights with little or no wind, when the outgoing radiation is greater than the incoming, and cooling air temperature near the surface creates a stable temperature inversion near the ground. These same conditions create a crystal clear atmosphere, which makes a full moon appear exceptionally bright.

But, is there evidence that a frost is more likely to occur on a night with a full moon than one without?

How to Know if You Have Enough Native Pollinator Habitat

This month in Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe - How to Know if You Have Enough Native Pollinator Habitat Serving Your Farm, we look at whether the global call to set aside cropland for native pollinator habitat applies to New Jersey farms.

If NJ urban fringe farmers manage or set aside land for native pollinator habitat, are they likely to gain any yield benefits?

Related Information on Pollinators

Plants Preferred by Native Pollinators Nesting Strategies	Key Findings Full PDF Honey Bee Health

Farm Calls: Vineyards, Helicopters, Frost Protection ...and Right-to-Farm

This week brings a call from a wine grape grower asking if the use of helicopters is among the accepted standard operating procedures in fruit growing regions during Inversion Layer Freezes.

There are two kinds of freezes affecting fruit crops:

Figure courtesy NCSU
Cooperative Extension

• Advection Freeze occurs when a very dry cold air mass moves into a region with strong winds
• Radiation Freeze, aka Inversion Layer Freeze, which occurs with a very dry local air mass, little or no wind, and a clear sky.

Helicopters have documented efficacy to reduce losses only against Inversion Layer Freezes and are considered part of legal Right-to-Farm protected standard operating practices in the US.

Other methods of protection against freeze include wind turbine machines, heaters and open burning (which requires NJDEP Exemption, as was granted in NJ 2012), water sprinklers, and cultural practices, e.g., moist bare soil in a vineyard makes vines less prone to freezing injury than dry soil with vegetation under the vines.

High Farmland Prices - Low Farmland Rents

This month in Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe - High Farmland Value, Low Farmland Rent: Unintended Consequences, explore how extraordinary high NJ cropland values became coupled with surprisingly low cost farmland rents. This situation presents opportunities to enter NJ farming through low cost leasing, despite the barriers usually associated with prohibitively expensive farmland.

If you are a landowner or farmer, get engaged and learn the importance of long term farmland leases by attending two upcoming Farmland Leasing Networking and Information Sessions on March 12 and March 14, sponsored by the SADC and NOFA.

Farming 7,500 acres by Cell Phone

Spelt field near maturity

This month in Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe:
First Generation Farmer of the Future - 7,500 acres conventional & organic cash grains by cell phone.

We dig deep into the nature of ag entrepreneurship, and how to profit using a non-judgmental approach to both conventional and organic production by supplying different markets. Read his extraordinary profile of how a first generation farmer conventionally farms 7,500 acres of cash grains on rented cropland by cell phone and 750 acres organically at his recently purchased home farm. One secret: focusing on weed cultivation.

Farm Calls: Apple & Peach Trees for an ‘Urban Ag’ Market Garden

This week, Mark Robson – Dean of Ag & Urban Programs – received a query from a community garden manager about expanding their small-scale ‘urban ag’ market garden to include fruit trees. She asked, “We want to add approximately 12 fruit trees. What varieties of apples and peaches do you recommend for small-scale operations?”

Choosing varieties is just one of many steps to growing fruit trees successfully. Let’s work through some of the challenges participants in a community garden will face before getting down to specific variety recommendations.

Crisis Fatigue and Ag in the Middle

For over a year we've been talking about creating a program that would help Ag in the Middle farms better cope with the special problems of farming on the urban fringe.

This month, Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe - Crisis Fatigue and Ag in the Middle, discusses our program designed to move Ag in the Middle farms toward sustainability through detailed analysis and education. And, we touch on barriers to program implementation under current conditions of "doing more with less." Companion handouts for actions that Ag in the Middle farms can take to improve survival are included in this announcement.