Take heed, chocolate, there’s a new sweet in town. For four days
in early February, vegetable and fruit producers met at the Hershey Lodge & Convention Center
to learn more about the fruit and vegetable production business.
This is the first of three related articles. I encourage you
to journey through the fruit and vegetable convention experience with me in the
weeks to come. It’s more than just fruits and vegetables; it’s about sharing
knowledge.
Back in mid-November, a fellow educator, John Berry, reached out to me
with a question.
He said, “How’d you like to get involved at the Fruit &
Vegetable Convention in Hershey this year?” He quickly added: “The hot chocolate up there
is the best.”
“Sure, sounds good,” I responded.
As I agreed to help, I was thinking: What a great
opportunity to learn, while building and fostering networks. And who could pass
up the great hot chocolate?
My charge was to assist Tom Butzler, of the Penn
State Extension. This year, he and his team took care of the equipment set-ups for
all the speakers. Tom asked me to load each presenter’s slides and make sure
all the other technologies worked seamlessly. As you’ll see, I got a chance to
do a lot more.
The first person I met when I arrived at the registration desk
at 7:25 a.m. on Tuesday was Bill
Troxell, of the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association. He happily greeted me and helped me with the
registration process. Complete with a name tag, I was on my way.
Over the coming days, topic-specific research discussions, concerning
either vegetables or fruits, in both English and Spanish, were offered each
half-hour from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Presentations were held in various rooms in
the Convention Center. Some were given by the farm owners and growers
themselves, while others were given by scholars and educators from such
entities as Penn State and the Penn State Cooperative Extension, Cornell
Cooperative Extension, Rutgers Cooperative Extension, the University of
Maryland Extension, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, the Virginia Cooperative
Extension, University of Delaware, University of Minnesota and North Carolina
Extension.
On Tuesday, more than 56 different session topics were
offered through the day. Much of my time was spent in the Organic Vegetable session
room.
At 8 a.m. sharp, I helped Tony Ricci load his presentation
titled Organic Herb Production. Tony
owns and operates the organic-certified Green
Heron Farm and CSA in Huntington County, Pa. His discussion centered on adding
herbs to your production mix, to add cash flow back into your business.
As I loaded his speaking materials into the computer, Tony and
I talked about the beautiful herb pictures included in his slides. We then talked
about the pros of planting herbs in addition to vegetables. The best part of
Tony’s presentation - to the 60-plus growers in attendance during the first organic
session - was that he gave away some of his best-kept secrets. He shared a few
of his proven methods with regards to producing great, not just good, sage, parsley
and Greek oregano.
“Plant your herbs in double rows on black (not red) plastic,
and treat them as annuals,” Tony recommended. “This is done to preserve quality, disease
resistance, and yield.”
Next up on in the Organic session room was Dr. Gladis Zinata
of the Rodale
Institute. Her report was titled Adding in Rotational No-Till and Insectary Strips
for Organic Cucumber Production. Dr. Zinata described the results of a
cucumber test-plot she and a team planted and documented at Rodale. The
experiment focused on this question: Does increasing species diversity by planting
grass and perennial insectary strips between cucumber rows allow for improved
natural insect and pathogenic resistance? My take after hearing her findings: Definitely
yes. Dr. Zinata’s research supports adding grass strips and incorporating other
vegetative diversity into your fields to offset the pressures of insect and
disease.
Growers next met Jennifer Glenister, a senior staff member at
the organic New Morning Farm in
Hustontown, Pa. She has worked nine seasons at New Morning. She gave a very
well-designed and well-delivered talk entitled Organic Snap Bean Production, followed by a lively Q&A session.
Jennifer shared her tried-and-true organic snap bean
production strategies, along with her sowing and growing schedules. Especially
valuable were her succession planting tips for longer harvests, and remedies
she suggested for dealing with deer.
“We tried many things on the farm, but the one that worked
for deer was the 3D electric fence,” Jennifer said, as a slide showing a three-tiered,
offset, poly-wire fence came up.
While scouting, Jennifer said the minute she sees certain insect
levels, she immediately deploys beneficial insects (a species of parasitic wasp)
as a strategy to manage the yield-robbing pests.
Jennifer’s snappy presentation was followed by another inspiring
discussion. This one, from Elsa
Sanchez, Ph.D. and associate professor at Penn State, was entitled Using Cover Crops. Elsa talked about the
benefits of diversifying cover crops. She encouraged the organic growers to
combine different cover crops into their field rotations. Additionally, Elsa went
into detail about choosing cover crops with alleopathic characteristics, such
as wheat and grain rye.
“Wheat and rye cover crops both contain beneficial natural
weed suppressants,” Elsa said.
The term alleopathic refers to cover crops with natural weed
suppression characteristics. During her discussion, Elsa also gave the group
per-acre cover crop seeding rates and biomass tonnage per-acre estimates for
cover crops.
An informative discussion given by Abby Seaman of the
New York State IPM Program, on Managing
Late Blight on Organic Farms, followed Elsa’s cover crop discussion. Abby
mentioned the need for producers to scout the field for fall-offs and/or
leftovers. Her recommendation: try to eliminate
any volunteer tomato and potato plants before they germinate to reduce the
likelihood of late blight outbreaks in the next season.
“Late blight on potatoes and tomatoes needs living tissue to
overwinter, so I recommend removing any leftover product from the field,” Abby said.
During Abby’s presentation, we also learned about two internet-based
resources designed to help producers report and monitor late blight in
Pennsylvania and New York.
I met Dr.
Julie Grossman, professor and originator of The Grossman Lab at the University
of Minnesota while helping her set up in the Organic session room. She
delivered two afternoon presentations. Her first was entitled Overcoming Tunnel Vision – Using Cover Crops
in High Tunnels. Her second presentation, Zone Tillage for Organic Vegetables, wrapped up the organic
sessions on Tuesday.
Dr. Grossman shared her research findings and the beneficial
outcomes of her research team for planting cover crops directly inside high
tunnels. She provided cover crop planning strategies growers can employ right
away in their tunnels to not only improve soil health and limit soil
compaction, but also to better manage weeds and help prevent insect damage.
Of the 56 fruit and vegetable presentations delivered on Tuesday, I had the joy
of attending seven of them. The experience was amazing. So many enthusiastic presenters,
all in one place at the same time. The knowledge attendees gained from
scholars, educators and growers will no doubt be put to work on farms across
the commonwealth.
For future reference, feel free to explore the following informative
and educational resource links:
