Happy New Year, farm family! As I type these words, I find myself straddling the space-time continuum in a way that I don’t often do. The change from one year to another has heightened my awareness of both the nature and passage of time. What is the nature of time? In my writing present, it is still...

It’s no secret that summers are getting hotter – as are autumns, winters and springs. That can make growing cold-season crops, such as broccoli, difficult. Luckily, a team of university researchers have assembled like the Avengers to help mitigate this dilemma. Conducting a multistate evaluation of ...

Receiving funding through a grant is a huge honor and success, but it takes a lot of work to earn it. Going through the process of applying for a grant can be really overwhelming, but the Tri-State Extension Dairy Team hosted a webinar to make the process easier to comprehend. UVM Extension Dairy Re...

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the environment. With droughts, floods, fires, heat waves and other extremes, a lack of control can be completely paralyzing. Maud Powell, a professor of practice in the Small Farms Extension program at Oregon State Universi...

Not all scientific research is done in a sterile lab setting or in carefully planted test plots. Some of it is done on plates, with forks and knives. A group from Washington State University Extension – Laura Schulz, Jordan White and Carol Miles – shared their results from a study titled “Finding th...

The American palate is ever expanding, and that’s thanks in large part to the wide variety of immigrants who now call the U.S. home. In bringing the flavors of the “old country” with them, they provide new flavors and even health benefits with crops not usually seen in American fields or farm stands...

“The only way to have insect- and disease-free boxwoods is to use Buxus plasticus,” Joe Boggs joked. (Only a plastic boxwood – Buxus taxonomically – could truly be problem-free.) Boggs is an assistant professor with Ohio State University (OSU) Extension specializing in entomology. OSU, the Ohio Gree...

Here’s a topic that’s as colorful as it is crucial for nursery production: the potential of colored shade materials to control hydrangea growth. Dr. Eric Stallknecht, assistant professor and greenhouse production specialist at Virginia Tech, led a vibrant discussion on whether different shade colors...

Due to the desired growth habits of Cannabis sativa, lighting may be more critical for this crop than many others. Even before it became legal again, growers were working on fine-tuning their lighting set-ups to achieve the perfect plant-to-flower ratio. Both public universities and private research...