For the 2015 edition of the Penn State Trial Gardens, Trial Director Sinclair Adam had his land legs, unlike last year when he had just been hired and thrown into the situation while still getting his bearings. His attire, totally appropriate for the day’s 82 degree temperatures, was reminiscent of ...

GLADESBORO, VA – Danny Cassell has been farming since he was big enough to walk behind the cabbage setter. He bought his first tractor in 1976. Today he is a fulltime farmer and has been for eight years, growing mainly pumpkins and sweet corn but also collards, kale, acorn, butternut and spaghetti s...

In 1979, Martina Navratilova and Björn Borg won Wimbledon, Kramer vs. Kramer was in the movie theaters and the cost of a first-class stamp was 15 cents. In American agriculture, over 60 percent of irrigation was performed through surface or subsurface methods. “That has drastically changed,” said Dr...

Pumpkins are big business in the United States. More than 50,000 acres of them are grown annually across the nation. That’s a lot of pumpkins, which are harvested almost entirely by hand. So how do growers best market this massive crop? Besides wholesale orders for retailers, agritourism is often th...

It’s mid-May and at Our Kids’ Farm in Exeter, RI the first strawberries are ripe. This is not a freak of nature. Rather, it is the result of a carefully designed business plan that includes niche items, creative growing practices, diversified offerings and season extension. Loren and Gina Thurn were...

There are many farmers’ markets in northern New Jersey and they each have to get creative to stay busy and profitable. The market in Sparta, Sussex County, has moved twice, from the municipal building parking lot to the middle school lot and now is in the parking lot of medical offices.Emma Lavin, w...

A few weeks ago, a consortium of local vegetable growers gathered at the Albion, ME research farm of Johnny’s Selected Seeds with one task in mind, to discuss the obstacles and opportunities related to growing tomatoes in the New England region. The Tomato Growers Roundtable is a conduit for growers...

With 2015 being the International Year of Soils, a lot of attention has been paid to the soil health of our country’s agricultural systems. While much attention has been put toward cropland and pasture, the same concern can, and ought to, be applied to orchards and groves. Recently NRCS hosted a web...

Researchers at Washington State University and the ARS are currently evaluating the impact of tiny soil-growing organisms with the jaw-breaker name of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM fungi) for enhancing onion growth and suppressing soil borne diseases caused by soil pathogens such as Rhizoctonia s...