by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Age truly is a number for Patricia Rickard, 76, a Baldwinsville, NY resident whose contemporaries are mostly retired. She tried that once. She operated Korros, which taught performing arts to children with hearing impairment. But as her encore career, she founded PAR Horticulture Consulting Business. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Creating an agritourism destination isn’t all fun and games — though it’s certainly helpful to provide a huge variety of fun and games. Developing Long Acre Farms from a produce and crop farm to an agritourism site that draws visitors from hundreds of miles around has taken 25 years. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Barcodes can help vegetable plant breeders stay better organized and be more efficient. Michael Mazourek, the Calvin Knoyes Keeney associate professor of Plant Breeding for Cornell University, presented “Getting Started with Barcode-based Digital Data Collection for Vegetable Breeding”, a recent webinar hosted by eXtension, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and USDA. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
GENEVA, NY — “Variety is the spice of life” as the saying goes, and it’s the key to profitability in the apple growing business — if you develop and grow the right varieties. Susan Brown, professor horticulture section at Cornell University, presented “Adventures in Apple Breeding and Genetics” recently at Cornell in Ithaca, NY and via videoconference at Cornell’s Geneva Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Many farms have added another stream of revenue to their operations through farmers markets and agritourism. However, Ontario Orchards in Oswego, NY has created a robust online store selling locally-produced goods with limited retail distribution. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Most people think of a landscaping nursery as a place to find the plants and people to achieve a picture-perfect lawn, providing they use the right sprays on their stretches of grass. Jim Sollecito, owner of Sollecito Landscaping Nursery in Syracuse, NY takes a different approach. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Successful organic farming depends upon keeping pace with new development in research. But how useful is the research? How can researchers know that their efforts are helping organic farmers profit? Recently, e-Organic presented a webinar, “Taking Stock: Analyzing and Reporting Organic Research Investments, 2002-2014” to present their findings on the topic. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Managing plant diseases challenges many organic producers, but with the right products and techniques, farmers can improve yield, according to presenters at the recent eOrganic.info webinar, “Using biofungicides, biostimulants and biofertilizers to boost crop productivity and help manage vegetable diseases”, co-hosted by the Tomato Organic Management and Improvement Project. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
It may not be a crystal ball, but weather apps developed by Cornell may help farmers better cope with fluctuations in weather.
Juliet Carroll, coordinator of the Fruit IPM program at Cornell University, presented “NEWA and CICSS Tools for Farmers” in an interactive demonstration at the recent Empire State Producers Expo. Aided by Jonathan Lambert, program assistant with Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions at Cornell University, Carroll led attendees in walking through the tools on their tablets, phones or laptops using the site’s WIFI connection. [Read more…]
by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Managing Spotted wing Drosophila doesn’t have to mean applying insecticide every week; in fact, Miguel Gomez, PhD, believes that other methods can work as well or better. [Read more…]
