Posts by Stephen Stresow
Wondering what to grow in your garden? Now you can consult Cornell’s Community Science Catalog As they anxiously await the upcoming growing season (and warmer weather), many farmers and gardeners browse through seed catalogs to decide what to plant. A single catalog or garden center seed stand can have hundreds of varieties for growers to…
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Research shows how the legacy of tarping and mulching can lead to fewer weeds in no–till vegetables. By Stephen Stresow and Ryan Maher The Woes of Weeding One of the persistent challenges for organic vegetable farmers is managing weeds. These floral foes emerge each season from the weed seedbank–a collection of all the weed seeds…
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In the latest episode of “Extension Out Loud,” a podcast by Cornell Cooperative Extension, one of the Cornell Small Farms Program’s interns, Stephen Stresow, shared his expertise about selecting, sowing, and saving seeds by helping listeners navigate the multitude of terms on seed packets and catalogs. After a hiatus in 2022, this was the first…
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Pass the time waiting for winter to turn to spring with new educational videos. Recordings from the 2022 Empire State Producers Expo are now available on the Cornell School of Integrative Plant Science’s YouTube page. The annual conference is organized by the New York State Vegetable Growers Association and Cornell Cooperative Extension and, due to…
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Are you curious about how tarps work? Want to learn from successful practices as well as the challenges and shortcomings? Our Reduced Tillage project is happy to share a new publication, “Tarping in the Northeast: A Guide for Small Farms,” that provides comprehensive information on the emerging practice of tarping — applying reusable tarps to…
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Sunlight is a precious resource in Central New York and a new collaboration between farmers and Cornell is looking at ways to harness it using technology that truly puts the soft in software: sheep. Thousands of acres in New York are being turned into solar farms and many fear that this will displace agricultural land.…
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In the latest episode of “Sweet Talk: All Things Maple,” a podcast by the Cornell Maple Program, the Cornell Small Farms Program’s specialty mushroom and agroforestry extension specialist, Steve Gabriel, shared his expertise on diversifying maple production through forest farming. This was the eighth episode of the podcast, which focuses on the latest research, news,…
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Managing cow manure has historically been a hassle for farmers, but new research shows how it can be transformed into valuable dry fertilizer. By using a process called pyrolysis, which “burns” organic matter at temperatures of 700 to 1,200 degrees F without oxygen, researchers from Cornell and Bio365 found that the nutrients from manure can…
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