Farm Calls: Exploring Exotic Mushroom Cultivation

This week Extension Agent Amy Rowe fields a question from a grower interested in getting into the commercial production of mushrooms.

"Where can I find information on cultivating shiitake, maitake, and several oyster varieties (blue, white, and pink)?"

Cultural practices for exotic mushrooms are both unusual and highly demanding.

Motivating Farmers to Attend Worthwhile Extension Programs

“The itinerant teacher will be expected to give as much thought to the economic side of agriculture as he gives to the matter of larger acreage yields.”

Congressman A.F. Lever of South Carolina,
US House of Representatives Report No. 110
creating Cooperative Extension Work, 1914

There’s a lot to chew on in Congressman Lever’s statement. With the creation of Cooperative Extension, Congress intended for educators to be mobile, traveling to farmers for the purpose of teaching the most economical methods of distribution as well as the best methods of production. There was an expectation that thought be given to what amounts to a curriculum for farmers. Following from that is the expectation that thought be given to how to motivate farmers to engage in programs that provide value to their lives and livelihood.

You might think that there is an easy, single answer to what motivates farmers to engage in worthwhile Extension programs: Profit. However, there’s more to it than that. In fact, we may be inadvertently presenting programming in ways that actually lead to disengagement.

Farm Calls: Vegetable "Seed Saving" for Small Farms

This week a training coordinator from the Beginning Farmer Incubator asks,

"Does Rutgers Cooperative Extension have "seed saving" information or recommendations that you can share?"

Seed production involves choosing the right varieties for seed saving as well as possessing detailed information in harvesting, processing, and storage. These are not skills you can learn from a "fact sheet." There's a lot that can go wrong, resulting in wasted time and money. I recommend a comprehensive resource guide geared for farmers, gardeners, and agricultural professionals:
The Organic Seed Grower: A Farmer's Guide to Vegetable Seed Production
(J. Navazio, 2012). Funding support was provided by Northeast SARE.

This 400-page hardcover grower's guide offers detailed, practical information for small to medium-sized farmers on the techniques of producing appreciable quantities of vegetable seed using sustainable and organic production farming techniques. It's a useful resource for both the non-organic as well as organic growers. It has over 35 crop specific chapters on growing, required isolation or bagging, harvest timing, and extraction methods. It instructs on how to avoid seed-borne diseases. It deals with minimum plant population sizes to maintain genetic integrity.

Author John Navazio has been affiliated with the Organic Seed Alliance and Washington State Extension. Citations include Vince Rubatzky (UC Davis retired) who received his Ph.D at Rutgers; Ed Ryder, the productive USDA lettuce breeder in Salinas; and Harry Paris, Israel's well-regarded cucurbit breeder who got his Ph.D. at Rutgers under Professor Bernie Pollack, of Ramapo tomato fame.

If you are serious about producing your own seed or if you work with growers interested in learning the skills involved, pick up a copy.

Organic Farm Calls: Squash Vine Borer and IPM Thresholds

Recently, an organic grower with a variety of squash crops under low tunnels called Ag Agent Meredith Melendez about wilting plant symptoms.

The various vine and bush varieties were decimated by squash vine borer (SVB) larvae root damage. Ornamental gourds were especially hard hit.

Farm Calls: Which fruit crops are best suited for an organic Pick-Your-Own?

Last week Meredith Melendez, Mercer County Ag Agent, fielded this question from a grower who currently runs a CSA and is considering adding PYO (pick-your-own) fruit to the farm's portfolio.

Rutgers Cooperative Extension Agents, including the Agritourism Team, weigh in with specific answers and solid advice.

They offer small-fruit crop suggestions, discuss the special problems related to organic cultivation of these crops, and comment on how agritourism activities can add to the farm's bottom-line.

Farm Calls: Raised Bed Mulch Layers for High Tunnels

This week a small-farm grower contacted us.

"We own high tunnels and needed information about making beds. Searching the web we found your Rutgers High Tunnels Construction website. It is a great site. I am particularly interested in the bed maker ya'll used. What brand was it and what was the cost? Knowledge about farm equipment in tunnels seems few and far between."

High Tunnels can benefit farms of all sizes through season extension and better quality crops. Rutgers County Agent Wes Kline owns and uses compact, raised bed mulch layers specially manufactured for the narrow rows and tight spaces found in high tunnels. The Nolt's Model RB436 is the most compact we know of in our region for this application.

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.

Farm Calls: Health Care Reform and NJ Farms

We've said in past articles, "Growers have to know a lot, about a lot" to be successful farming on the urban fringe. Farm operations are affected in innumerable ways by activities on Capitol Hill. Keeping up with the changes is a full time job. Nowhere is this more true than the impending implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Clearly, agriculture was abandoned and forgotten by lawmakers, and their policy aides, when creating the Act in 2010.

This week, a Jersey nursery grower asks, "How will health care reform mandates impact my operation?"
To answer this, we need to consider:

• What are the contents of the Affordable Care Act as it stands now that affect agriculture?
• What do the mandates mean to a NJ farm in terms of implementation - costs, paperwork, and workforce availability?
• What preparations will have to be made in this grower's operation now to remain economically viable in 2014?

Yield Expectations for Mixed Stand, Small-Scale Agriculture

This month in the Sustaining Farming on the Urban Fringe Briefing we determine realistic yield expectations for mixed stand, small-scale farming or market garden ventures. We discuss the importance of yield expectations as an integral business and project planning tool.

Wide rows on a u-pick farm provide space for people to
make multiple harvests. Plant spacing affects yield.

More and more, people without experience in agriculture are entering "the field" either as new farmers, community economic development sociologists, urban policy planning professionals, or individuals in search of grant opportunities. Goal setting by people new to farming must be grounded in reality.

Organic Farm Calls: Evidence-Based Agriculture and Aerated Compost Tea

Compost Tea Brewer

This month we received a request for tech support on “farm-scale” Aerated Compost Tea (ACT) brewing. This request brings up the larger issue of evidence-based agriculture practices.

Farm Calls: Growers Ask for Recommendations on Applying Hardwood Chips to Cropland

Atlantic County Extension Ag Agent Rick VanVranken has been fielding a number of calls from vegetable and hay growers about the use of hardwood chips on cropland.

A June 30, 2012 Derecho windstorm cut a path over Jersey's Outer Coastal Plain farming areas, downing thousands of trees. The area received a federal disaster declaration and crews are clearing trees and chipping.

Understanding the best methods for applying hardwood chips for soil quality improvement while avoiding crop nutrient deficiencies is the key. Hardwood chips from large trees may have a carbon to nitrogen ratio approaching 200:1. A typical healthy soil has a carbon to nitrogen ratio of about 10 or 12:1. Spread and tilled into soil, without following the recommendations below, will result in crops with nutrient deficiencies due to microbial immobilization of soil nitrogen.

Sustainability Starts with a Marketing Plan

From Growing Produce 3-8-2012

Rick VanVranken gives tips on developing a marketing program that works for your growing operation.

"Your marketing plan is the map that will identify your potential customers and what products you might sell them."

Using un-composted leaf mulch on trellised lima bean

After recent scorching weather, Rutgers' Joe Heckman checks soil moisture retained under leaf mulch layer compared with adjacent cultivated bare ground. A 5-6" leaf mulch layer (~35,000 lb./A) was placed at transplanting in May.

Organic Farm Calls: @#*%$! Flaming Weeds

This week a Jersey grower asks why his high BTU vapor phase propane weed flamer doesn't kill all his weeds. He reports that it seems to work fair - most of the time - on broadleaf weeds, but doesn't do an adequate job on grasses. Why are his results so variable?

Weed control implement with vapor phase propane burners