Summer cover crops offer clear benefits to vegetable growers and the environment. Cover cropping offers clear benefits to growers and the environment. It is a valuable opportunity to add organic material to the soil, and it increases soil carbon, enhances soil fertility and nitrogen cycling, reduces erosion, and helps to reduce weed pressure in subsequent…Read more about Summer Cover Crops for Improved Soil Health and Weed Management[Read More]
Soil health
Small and medium-sized vegetable farms face unique challenges balancing profitability with sustainable production practices and food safety requirements. To better understand how these farmers navigate complex decision-making processes, the Soil to Market Team—comprising Maria Marshall, Renee Wiatt, Petrus Langenhoven, Betty Feng, and Nathan Shoaf—conducted a comprehensive survey of 500 small and medium-sized farmers across the…Read more about Understanding Farm Decision-Making: Insights from the 2024-2025 Producer Survey[Read More]
Small and medium-sized vegetable farms face unique challenges balancing profitability with sustainable production practices and food safety requirements. To better understand how these farmers navigate complex decision-making processes, the Soil to Market Team—comprising Maria Marshall, Renee Wiatt, Petrus Langenhoven, Betty Feng, and Nathan Shoaf—conducted a comprehensive survey of 500 small and medium-sized farmers across the…Read more about Understanding Farm Decision-Making: Insights from the 2024-2025 Producer Survey[Read More]
The Indiana Nutrient Management Tool is a new Excel workbook that provides fertilizer and amendment recommendations for vegetables commonly grown in Indiana. Whether for a backyard garden or a market farm, the tool allows the user to create a plan for the amount of products needed to meet the nutrient goals, which can be based…Read more about Indiana Nutrient Management Tool[Read More]
Bryan Overstreet is the new Purdue Extension Northern Indiana Soil Conservation Coordinator / Conservation Cropping System Initiative Northern Indiana Conservation Agronomist. Bryan has been the Jasper County Extension ANR educator for the past 18 years. Prior to that, he worked for a local Co-op as an agronomist for 15 years. Included in his new duties…Read more about New Purdue Extension Northern Indiana Soil Conservation Coordinator[Read More]
The 2023 cover crop survey is underway Adopted from NCR SARE news release, “Farmers: Share Your Thoughts on Cover Crops in the National Cover Crop Survey!“, March 1, 2023 Farmers are invited to share their thoughts on cover crops in an online survey. Why do you plant cover crops…or why don’t you? What do you…Read more about Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education News[Read More]
Recent price increases and supply chain shortages for fertilizers, chemicals, and energy have impacted farm profitability and viability. As a result, many Indiana farmers are interested in alternative and more sustainable approaches to maintaining crop productivity and building soil health, such as applying composts to their soils. Applying compost to the soil is common in…Read more about Are You Thinking of Applying Compost to Your Soils?[Read More]
At the Pinney Purdue Ag Center in northern Indiana we had plots in 2020 with no-till sweet corn, pumpkins and winter squash following a rye cover crop. As is common when adapting new planting and tillage systems, we had both challenges and successes. Check out the video presentations to see photos of the plots, and…Read more about No-till Sweet Corn, Pumpkin and Winter Squash after Winter Rye – Reports from 2020[Read More]
