Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: barley, rye, wheat
- Fruits: berries (strawberries)
Practices
- Crop Production: biological inoculants, cover crops
- Education and Training: extension, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
- Pest Management: allelopathy, biological control, botanical pesticides, field monitoring/scouting, mulches - killed, soil solarization
- Soil Management: green manures, soil analysis
Proposal summary:
Ruby Mountain Nursery, on the high desert of Colorado, has produced strawberry plants for without the use of pesticides for four years. However, fumigants have been needed to reduce weeds and Verticillium inoculum. Alternatives to fumigation, including solarization (heating the soil by covering it with plastic), have been used with success in warm areas like California. Solarization alone may not work in Colorado’s high desert, however, because the air temperatures are lower than in California. In addition to solarization, green manures, especially natural fumigant-producing brassicas, have been effective at reducing Verticillium. This grant will conduct three tests to see if a combination of these alternatives will work. The first will test four green manure species (mustard, rape, broccoli and barley) with and without solarization. The second will test the effects of the green manures and a biocontrol organism, peroxide and ammonia. The third will test two biocontrol organisms with solarization.