No farmer in New England wants to relive the 2023 growing season. A hard freeze in late May was followed by one of the wettest summers on record, and crop farmers of all kinds faced several unexpected challenges. The weather created a ripple effect, leaving farmers with less working capital for the ...

On Feb. 25, 2024, my good friend Arthur (Art) C. Abbott Jr. passed away after battling an extended illness. I wanted to share some thoughts on our relationship and the impact he had not only on me personally but on the vegetable industry. As our colleague Dr. Mike Orzolek, professor emeritus, Penn S...

It’s always the talk of the town when a storied establishment evolves and that’s true of Lee Newspapers . For nearly six decades, the business has called their building on Route 5 in Palatine Bridge, NY, home, but in the very near future, headquarters will be relocated just down the road. Janet Lee ...

It all started in 2019 when Brooke Freeman, along with the help of her family, began growing their first few beds of commercial flowers. That was the first step toward building the thriving business that is Brooke’s Fresh Cut Flower Farm, located in Goldsboro, NC. That year, she also began putting i...

Agritourism is an ever-growing market, and U-pick operations continue to gain popularity. A lot of farms are considering adding tulips to their business plans but are unsure how to manage them. At the NAFDMA Convention in February, a tulip panel workshop took place, showing tulip operations from sma...

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, readers were first introduced to the line “Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.” For growers near the Great Lakes who irrigate their crops, that rhyming couplet cou...

Ginger ( Zingiber officinale ) is a tropical plant native to the humid, partly shaded habitats in moist tropical and subtropical forests of Southeast Asia. By mimicking these tropical conditions in high tunnels, ginger is becoming an increasingly popular specialty crop in the eastern U.S. Although i...

“People don’t open their Instagram app expecting to be sold to. They want to be engaged with – to be entertained,” stated Penn State Extension’s Miranda Harple during a recent webinar about the use of Instagram to elevate your brand and connect with customers. In its ongoing evolution as a product a...

Ridding soil of pathogens, weeds and nematodes remains an ongoing challenge for growers. To further research this problem, Dr. Francesco Di Gioia, assistant professor of vegetable crop science at Penn State, and Dr. Erin Rosskopf, USDA-ARS in Florida, worked on a multi-regional project funded by NIF...