I also have water between the raised beds this time of year, but we are not irrigating in the wetter Northeast. That's why raised beds are important in the garden. A living #covercrop on the raised bed helps remove the water both upward and downward through transpiration and percolation.
Urea price just jumped 50%, and field corn is at only $4.30. Under what conditions will it pay to plant an N-fixing #covercrop instead this spring? Is that idea too radical?
When testing living mulch as a #covercrop system, the default expectation has to be that the cover crop will compete too much with the main crop and that pest pressure will be higher. If the new system is an exception, the burden of proof is high if one is to be taken seriously.
Virtual Field Day: Cover Crop and Manure Timing to Maximize Water Quality and Corn Yield
Iowa Learning Farms (ILF), in partnership with the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, will host a virtual field day on Thursday, Mar. 12, at 1 p.m. CT. The event, which is available at no cost, will feature a live…
Is the lesson from this that, if ones reasoning is freed from the pull of gravity, one can still publish with MDPI?
Biofuels are another driver. Corn, soy, canola, and sugarcane all are being increasingly used to power vehicles instead of people.
This is a shockingly inefficient use of land; EVs can go *300x* farther powered by a hectare of solar panels vs a hectare of crops! 10/
📖New Resource - Cover Crops Guide🌱
The UK’s first accessible, independent, farmer-led and scientifically supported farmers’ guide on #CoverCropping from AHDB is now available via Agricology's resources page.
➡️ agricology.co.uk/resource/cov...
Founded by @angusgowthorpe.bsky.social
How do you breed tomatoes with both the disease resistance organic production requires and the superior flavor organic consumers expect? Three experienced breeders will describe their approach in this eOrganic webinar on March 24 eorganic.org/node/36450
Jim Myers, Julie Dawson and Jared Zystro
Copper is the only organic-approved material that works against downy. In humid climates with no fungicides, you get complete loss of folige by September and no grapes to harvest. So losing copper means losing the farm for many of these growers.
Two keys to #covercrop success are #faststart and #nogaps. This grower met the first by using a planter for seeding when other methods had failed. But the covercrop does not suppress weeds in the wide gaps between rows. That managent goal is met with herbicides.
Nitrogen supply can easilty be a limiting factor in organic production. But essential for avoiding the expensive extermalities of N fertilizer. Legume cover crops are the obvious tool, but the production system needs to be optimized for each climate and crop mix. This paper does for German corn.
Two keys to #covercrop success are #faststart and #nogaps. This grower met the first by using a planter for seeding when other methods had failed. But the covercrop does not suppress weeds in the wide gaps between rows. That managent goal is met with herbicides.
www.farmprogress.com/cover-crops/...
The Cornell AgriTech Summer Scholars program is back!
It is a paid research undergraduate research internship at one of the worlds premier horticulture institutions. We are now accepting applications for a new cohort of excellent undergraduates for summer 2026. cals.cornell.edu/cornell-agri...
A colleague, Gary Harman, did design a soil fungus to serve as a biocontrol. He started with a saprophyte because they do so many different things. The added trait that made it valuable is rhizosphere competence, which is very aggressive colonization of root surfaces. Trichoderma harzianum T22.
Don't feel bad. I work on heritability, but that is the only term in the figure I understand. The others are paper-specific jargon, so the figure does not stand alone.
Impressive work by Oleksandr Zhuikov et al on improving sustainability of production despite the Khakovka field site being on the front line of a hot war.
doi.org/10.15421/012...
They achieved better NUE, WUE and climate resilience by leveraging biological processes in the soil.
New Research: Keller et al PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Subsoil compaction worsens when intervals between compaction events are shorter than soil structure recovery times
#Covercrops can reduce recovery times when managed for that goal. Roots make holes and can make soil column support weight.
If you read the original work, you find that the Anthropocene articles makes some significant claims that are not supported by the research. It is unfortutate when people just try to dump on organic because they don't like it. We know that happens, but scientists need to be less gullible.
Jeff Liebert & colleagues looked at adoption of #covercrops among NY and CA vegetable farmers. 13% of cover crop users thought it used a lot of labor, but 26% of non users thought so. Can extension about low-labor approaches increase adoption?
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
I have found the same. My X account has only about 10% of the activity it once had, but those users are very engaged in the practices I post about. My focus on cover crops minimizes the toxicity. I want to be part of the practitioner conversation.
I used to hear that about NY as well. Finance outpaces ag even more than in Georgia. We figure it is biggest by land area.
You can visit the US national apple collection every year at the open house in mid-September at the germplasm repository in Geneva NY. Hundreds of accessions to see, smell and taste. Some are pretty wild.
Of course, the staff is furloughed since Oct 1 until a Federal budget passes.
& Harvest removal
How much annual N&P does it take to maintain primary productivity in excess of respiration in this system?
I wish articles with general interst like this had abstracts written without the obscuring and unnecessary scientese. To me, a fellow scientist, the report is less persuasive when researchers do that.
This research adds important understanding of the nitrogen cycle to reduce nitrate leaching. Root growth and plant decomposition influence risk. We know the functional models, but need to fill in parameter values for many production systems. Especially to get max value from #covercrops.
I am confused by the same point. It is a very weird assertion.
It would indeed be helpful to understand how your model would work. I'm eager to understand correctly because I have not seen a solution that matches the ideal of its developers. Including our presently dominant mode.
You say that you are depending on that dysfunctional social dynamic to improve the quality of dissemination of scientific progress. The two statements seem irreconcilable to me. Isn't this the kind of engagement with claims that you hope to have?
In the US, science is suffering very badly right now because certain influential people schooled in disruptive innovation are controlling science policy. I consider that a big miss.
