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Students Grow Plants and Community at Dilmun Hill
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Undergraduates manage day-to-day operations at Dilmun Hill Student Farm, which was envisioned 30 years ago. For the past almost-30 years, a small group of undergraduates has worked together to run Dilmun Hill Student Farm. With support from the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES), Dilmun’s student managers choose which crops to plant, how…
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News from the Cornell Small Farms Program, Spring 2023
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Welcoming a New Team Members to the Small Farms Program The Cornell Small Farms Program team continues to grow, and we recently welcomed our newest team members, Sarah Bassman and Tim W. Shenk. Sarah and Tim introduce themselves below, and share more about what they’ll be working on. From Sarah: I joined the Small Farms Program…
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Tarps, Mulch, and Timing: No-Till Tools to Rob the Weed Seedbank
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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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Learn About Tarping on Northeast Farms with New Guide
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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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In the News: Deep Dive into Compost
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Reduced tillage practices and weed suppression management are common goals of small-scale organic farmers. A lesser-known method is deep-composting, which was presented by the Reduced Tillage Project and a team of Cornell University researchers at the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Winter Conference as a solution to weed suppression in a reduced tillage system. …
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In the News: How We Help NYS Farmers Implement Reduced Tillage Systems
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Sweeping problems under the rug usually leads to larger problems in the future, unless of course, the problem is weeds and the rug is tarps. Tarping fields as a weed management strategy is an integral part of many organic and reduced tillage operations. Cornell Small Farms Program director, Anu Rangarajan, and Reduced Tillage project coordinator,…
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Join Us for a Soil Health Conversation at Empire Farm Days
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Join us at Empire Farm Days from Aug. 6-8 in Seneca Falls, New York for educational events and conversations focused around soil health in the Northeast. Building soil health is imperative for a farm’s resilience in the face of drought and extreme weather events, erosion, water, and fertility management, as well as ecological and economic…
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Join Us at Upcoming Field Day to Talk Tarping and Reduced Tillage
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As part of the Organic@Cornell Summer Field Day Series, the Cornell Small Farms Program will be sharing our work on tarping and reduced tillage in small-scale organic vegetable production. This free field day event, “Innovations in Organic Vegetable Production,” will be held on Wednesday, July 31, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Homer…
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Small Farms Staff to Present at “Farmer to Farmer” Conference
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If you head out to the Homer C. Thompson Research Farm in Freeville, NY, you’ll find a field filled with permanent beds in the organic section of the farm. These beds have been under trial for four years using different combinations of tarps, mulches, and tillage depths to discover the ideal system for an organic…
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Handbook Offers How-To and Tools for Reduced Tillage
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If you’re interested in improving your farm’s soil health, reduced tillage may be the answer. Reduced tillage practices can minimize soil disturbance by using less intensity, going shallower, and restricting the width or tilled-area. They can be applied to a bed, within a field or across the whole farm. The practices can take many forms,…
Ryan Maher
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