Project Overview
Information Products
Commodities
- Agronomic: potatoes
- Vegetables: beans, beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, carrots, cauliflower, cucurbits, eggplant, garlic, greens (leafy), greens (lettuces), leeks, onions, other, parsnips, peas (culinary), peppers, radishes (culinary), rutabagas, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, turnips
Practices
- Crop Production: cover crops, crop rotation, cropping systems, fertilizers, food product quality/safety, high tunnels or hoop houses, irrigation, no-till, organic fertilizers, other, postharvest treatment, row covers (for season extension), season extension, shade cloth, winter storage
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, technical assistance
- Pest Management: biological control, botanical pesticides, cultivation, cultural control, economic threshold, field monitoring/scouting, flame, mulches - general, mulches - killed, mulches - living, mulching - plastic, physical control, prevention, row covers (for pests), sanitation
- Production Systems: organic agriculture
- Soil Management: soil analysis
Proposal summary:
Thousands of individuals have accessed the fertility, production, and harvest manuals available on the Roxbury Agriculture Institute website, and they continue to be accessed daily. However, the production and harvest information in these manuals is based on procedures and parameters specific to Roxbury Farm, and frankly some facts stated are out of date. In order to update the manuals and to make them more inclusive, I propose editing the production information to include production records from other successful market farms and to include high tunnel production.
By seeking input from Cornell Cooperative Extension specialists, the information offered on insect, disease control will reflect the most recent research on efficacy of products, and to ensure that the harvest manual corresponds with FSMA guidelines. By making the detailed manual more adaptable to a variety of situations and by including input from other farms and corrections from service providers, the information in the manuals will become more relevant to the next generation of farmers.
These manuals will maintain their core identity as step-by-step reference sheet to help a new farmer move through the season from planning all the way to harvest procedures. This manual does not try to create a complete picture of all farming aspects, as it aims to provide a simple but complete reference sheet to produce each vegetable.
Project objectives from proposal:
This project seeks to update and correct the Roxbury Farm Manuals by using more universal production parameters by reaching out to other growers and receiving feedback from extension specialists to appeal to an even larger audience of farmer/gardeners that work at a scale between 2 and 50 acres. The new manual will also include production practices for high tunnel production. The manual is to be used as a quick reference material to help to beginning farmers in creating a crop plan, help estimate what resources are needed, and to develop better and more efficient harvest and post-harvest procedures.