The location of your nursery, what you’re growing and how you’re growing it will influence the type of preparation your plants need to survive the winter season and emerge thriving in the spring. Protecting against freeze, frost, desiccation, rodents and winter injury requires planning. General Conc...

Reliable, high-speed internet in rural regions has been an issue for decades. City centers and villages can download movies in minutes; meanwhile, those traveling some country roads need to let others know their approximate locations in advance because there is no service available in case of an acc...

Chances are that the lettuce or other leafy greens eaten by the majority of consumers aren’t grown anywhere near their homes, unless they live in Arizona or California. According to recent data from the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Arizona and California dominate the market for shipped rom...

Founding a successful agriculture/culinary business relies on an owner’s ability to tweak the business to the times. Plenty have folded when demand drops, tastes change or another business offering more comes into the area. That’s why Alfresco FLX presented a panel on the topic at its recent virtual...

Nick Flax from Penn State Extension wants to know how many growers have a pesticide storage area that looks “nice, neatly organized, everything alphabetically sorted, clean labels where you can read everything.” His example was anything but that. The facetious photo showed a pesticide shed that came...

Knowing if your apple crop is ripe is very important for your farm’s profits. That’s certainly true at Buffalo Ridge Orchard, where co-owner Emma Johnson determines when it’s time to harvest the Central City, Iowa, farm’s crop. Johnson spoke on apple ripeness in a recent virtual on-farm workshop hos...

Vegetable growers are always on the defense against plant pathogens and diseases. But what happens when the crop itself is harboring a pathogen that causes human illness? Defending against human foodborne illness requires knowledge of the risks and a plan to prevent contamination in the field. Outbr...

One of the most profitable ways to sell fresh fruits and vegetables is to a specialty restaurant chef that uses the highest quality produce available. This type of marketing takes a lot of legwork to be successful because it involves visiting the chef several times during the season to check on thei...

An important lesson learned during 2020 is the awareness that if anything can go wrong, it may do so, and in a big and unfathomable way. As business owners grapple with finishing out a turbulent year, the realization of developing a contingency plan takes on new meaning. The question becomes what to...