It's winter-time and we're planning for our upcoming season! Provide feedback by responding to survey questions on this page or by commenting on our YouTube channel!
Turning peanut into a party zone for pest control.
We want to try out a new crop and see if we can also use it as part of a behavioral control for tarnished plant bug and cucumber beetle. Hang on to your butts because there's a lot of moving parts to this one!
Non-Target Effects of Pesticides on Beneficial Insects.
We want to test out commonly used crop protection materials to make sure they're safe for beneficial insects like lady beetles. Some of the over-the-counter or home remedies we use in our gardens are probably safe...but let's find out!
Impact of defoliation on sweetpotato yield.
We're thinking about repeating a classic study with sweetpotato, to see what aboveground damage from deer or insect feeding does to the yield of the sweetpotato roots belowground.
Dead-end trap crop for brassica pests.
Instead of spraying kale with pesticides, we're going to try and fool pests into laying their eggs on the wrong crop by spraying beans with kale juice. Crazy? Maybe? We want to test out whether or not it works and whether or not you can do this with any kind of bean plant.
Pepper maggot monitoring.
Pepper maggot is an understudied pest with an outsized impact on organic pepper production in the northeast. We'd like to team up with the experts at UMass to test a method of detecting this tricky fly.