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