Cultural Control

 If I were a full-time farmer, I would have two tragic flaws that would be my downfall, removing my focus from any other tasks and thereby removing loads of productivity: 1. pruning (or thinking about what to prune), and 2. killing pests.

Of course killing pests is important. Organics require a great deal more labor to control little bugs, critters, spores, and diseases than conventional farms that can make it all go away with one magical spray. Importance aside, removing the things that exist to prevent you from eating your produce is fun. While I know that testing the nematodes in the lab is going to end up producing greater results than going out and hunting down the snout beetles with only our bare hands as weapons, it's a lot less rewarding.

However, we're not dealing with snout beetles in our little garden. We've got cucumber beetles that are attacking our zucchini and cucumbers relentlessly. As you can see in the close-up, they don't tend to blend in very well with their surroundings. The black and yellow outer wings make them stand out like a bumble-bee, with less buzz and no sting. I could stand out there for hours patiently waiting for one to land on a leaf just to snatch it up and squish it between my fingers.

Since there are no control methods aside from using pesticides (although one source I found said nematodes provide some measure of control... I'll have to look into it), squishing them is really the only thing I could think of. Just to give you an idea, in our little garden with three cucumbers and one zucchini plant, I killed 16 or so in one day two weeks ago. Imagine if we had an entire field of those enticing plants. Recently I've seen a lot fewer, two or three in one day at most. When I attended the Dilmun work party however, I must have killed 30 or 40 of them, and probably over 100 squash bugs as well. They have already lost half of their squash plants to these pests.

The only tip I can provide is catching them in the early morning or evening when they're not so energetic and don't flee as quickly as during the middle of the day. Other than that, happy squashing!

Veggies Gone Wild

 That pleasant little bed in my backyard is overflowing with life! And we were worried nothing would come of it because it was too shady. Not so.

As it turns out, we have more than we bargained for. For Halloween last year, Dilmun Hill (the student-run organic farm on campus) held pumpkin carving as an activity on the Ag Quad. It ended up raining so there were pumpkins left over and I took one to be festive. Then I ended up with some gourds that were leftover from a catering event to add to the house decor. Naturally, the end came for them as they started to go bad and my roommates made me dispose of their stinking carcasses, which I did by throwing them in the backyard. So of course the seeds planted themselves and we ended up with several pumpkin/gourd volunteers! They've gone wild, taking over the area near the little bean bed as you can see above. We've tried to train one of them to prevent it from growing into the beans (left). Regardless of whether they produce fruit or not, they're still beautiful plants and are providing a distraction for the cucumber beetles that destroyed our zucchini plant. See the next post for more details on that battle.



The tomatoes have flowered and are starting to develop beautiful fruit... lots of them. Turns out I probably should have pruned a little bit more than I did, but once the branches start to get flowers, it's pretty difficult to deny them their fruit! As you can see, they've grown pretty out of control. Out and above the cages, taller than me, at least 40 flowers on the cherry. We're going to be buried in tomatoes pretty soon. Time to start looking up salsa and pasta sauce recipes!

New City, New Adventure: Ithaca!

This summer, with SUFCo's experience and wisdom in hand, I'm attempting a little urban farming project in my backyard in Ithaca, New York. Brand spankin' new raised beds are in (all credit for that goes to the Callahans!) and some tomatoes, peppers, beans, lettuce, and herbs are steadily absorbing nutrients, water, and the unreliable Ithacan sunlight.

On top of this adventure, I'm doing another agriculture-related internship this summer with the Cornell Cooperative Extension, working with an IPM program using nematodes as a biocontrol agent against the alfalfa snout beetle. Alfalfa is hugely important to New York's dairy industry as fodder for the cows, which is hugely important to New York as it is the fourth most productive dairy state in the country. The beetle is concentrated in northern NY due to the climate and geographical barriers (i.e. the lakes to the west and the ocean to the east). It came over from Europe around the 1850s and farmers have been battling crop losses since then. My job is to work on the multimedia training modules for farmers that have been developed and also to get feedback on how the trainings/workshops have been. I'll do some posts about this as well but there is another blog available with all of the Cooperative Extension internships, many of which sound really interesting. Here's the link in case it sounds interesting enough to you.

Onto the exciting part, here's some pictures of the new urban gardening project!

Containers for a couple tomatoes, sage, Thai basil, and some flowers. Saves room in the beds for other things.

Beans! Of varieties we aren't sure of because we planted them for free with Dilmun Hill, the student run organic farm on campus. It'll be a nice surprise when they grow, kind of like not knowing the gender of a baby before its born... or at least I'm going to think of it that way.

Basil!

Rosemary that was propagated from a greenhouse I was in for class... just stuck them in water for a few weeks and they grew roots! A couple of them appear to be struggling but there's plenty there. Hopefully some of them are successful!

Happy tomatoes