Reduced Tillage
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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…
Read MoreHear the latest Cornell Small Farms Program research on reduced and no-till practices for vegetables at Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Field Days this July. We’ll be sharing our research along with the NY Soil Health team and partners in a statewide event series running this summer. On July 25, we’ll be at Cornell’s Thompson…
Read MoreCSA Farm experiments to minimize inputs, mechanization and soil disturbance in their market-scale potato growing operation. By Bob Tuori, Ryan Maher, and Michael Salzl A major concern on our highly intensive organic farm is how to grow potatoes on a scale that supplies our diverse and abundant CSA shares yet in way that minimizes labor…
Read MorePass 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…
Read MoreAre 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…
Read MoreThe Empire State Producers EXPO has announced plans for a virtual conference with educational sessions offered from February 21 to March 11, 2022. The in-person event, initially scheduled for January 11-13 at the Syracuse OnCenter, was postponed due to the spike in COVID cases. Sessions are now being offered virtually, spread out over a three-week…
Read MoreThe Cornell Small Farms Program continues to document our on-farm trials on tarping practices for organic vegetables. What’s happening under tarps? How are weeds and soils changing? How do they fit in a vegetable rotation with less tillage? And how do we handle and troubleshoot the shortcomings? The current work of the Cornell Small Farms…
Read MoreTarps are clearly a multifunctional tool for small farmers and are being sized, sourced, and applied to fit the farm. How much can we ask of tarps, how are they changing our tillage and weeds, and how do we handle and troubleshoot the shortcomings? We hosted a series of lunchtime webinars in partnership with the…
Read MoreJoin us on January 12, 2021, to hear farmer experiences and research on cover cropping and no-till practices from around the region during the Soil Health Sessions at the virtual 2021 Empire State Producers Expo. Our own Ryan Maher, the coordinator of our Reduced Tillage project, organized these sessions on soil health, cover crops and…
Read MoreThe Cornell Small Farms Program is happy to share the news that Brian Caldwell has been appointed to the USDA National Organic Standards Board, beginning a five-year term in 2021. Brian was a major contributor to the Reduced Tillage project for five years before retiring from Cornell in the spring of 2019. Brian brought decades…
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