“With great power comes great power bills” – so jokes Joe Czajkowski, owner of Lakeside Organic of Hadley LLC and Joe Czajkowski Farm in Massachusetts. He’s not wrong, and the idea of generating your own electricity becomes more tempting as you use more of it. For some farmers, wind turbines make se...

Most states have destination marketing organizations (DMOs) focused on promoting regional tourism opportunities. For example, New York State has 20 DMOs: Discover Albany , Visit Ithaca , Meet Me in Lake Placid and Dutchess Tourism , among others. Some DMOs are membership-only organizations while oth...

“How much?” That’s the question Justin Leavitt encouraged growers to ask themselves when it comes to watering their plants. “But the real question is not ‘How much should I be watering?” It’s ‘How much oxygen is in water?” Leavitt, the North American Horticulture Business development manager for Mol...

With autumn just around the corner, there are plenty of opportunities to freshen up your product displays and attract new customers. Visual merchandising is a successful technique to draw attention to your products, increase sales and make customers’ experiences more enjoyable. Joe Baer, the cofound...

One of my favorite parts of attending the Cultivate conference every year is seeing the presentations from the AmericanHort HortScholars . Each year, six college students are chosen for this beyond-the-classroom experience, which gives them insight and awareness of the industry, its supply chain and...

The older I get the faster time seems to fly by. It seems like only yesterday when I started penning my “Cultivating Thoughts” column, and here we are already entering my fourth fall season. I have said before that autumn is my favorite season (although at my age, every season is good). That first f...

Customers are drawn to the fresh produce at Crimson and Clover Farm as iron filings to a magnet. There are between 500 and 550 CSA members that range from western Massachusetts to 12 distribution sites in Boston. A crew of eight people work the farm. Two of the crew drive to Boston twice a week to d...

BURNSVILLE, NC – The western North Carolina Appalachians are home both to some of the oldest mountains in the world and a highly diverse forest ecosystem. All the forest types you find as you travel the length of the Appalachians, from Georgia to Maine, you can find here in North Carolina, distribut...

As 2024 marches on, the family running Heritage Tree Farm prepares to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Shanelle Lee, along with her husband Kris Lee and her parents Ken and Deb Weaver, founded Heritage Tree on a 15-acre plot in 2014. According to Shanelle, “It was always a dream of my mom’s to have...

With the Halloween season quickly approaching, pumpkin sales are thriving – but what do we do with the jack-o’-lanterns after the holiday? Pumpkin smashes, where people can donate their pumpkins, smash them for entertainment and use the pieces for composting or animal feed, are rising in popularity....

From the soil to the seed to the blossom to the ripe vegetable, everything a grower does happens under a watchful eye. Once harvest is complete and the produce is sold, however, it seems like they have no input on how the fruits of their labor (literally) are used. Luckily, more consumers – and rest...

The exciting times of apple picking, pumpkin patches and fall harvests are coming up quickly, and participating farms need a solid marketing plan to pull off a successful event. NAFDMA , the international agritourism association, hosted a webinar to give farmers some tips on how to successfully mark...

Freshly picked apples from the orchard are smooth and shiny – does that make them “clean”? According to Carol Allen, University of Maryland Plant Science, it’s easy to think apples are clean based on appearance, but there are plenty of opportunities for them to become contaminated before reaching th...

Spring Ledge Farm, a vegetable and potted plant farm located in New London, NH, provides a great example of how crops can be physically protected from climate stressors. Olivia Saunders, a field specialist with UNH Cooperative Extension, recently hosted a session at the operation to provide New Engl...

New technology is being developed all the time for all kinds of applications. And new uses are constantly being considered too. Look at the laser. Defined, a laser is “a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation.”...