RD Editorial January-February 2024

Shine and rise!

The days are definitely getting longer. If you don’t set the alarm, you could end up sleeping right through sunrise. We’re still a long way from spring, but for greenhouse growers who rely on natural light, there is the promise that dormant crops huddled close to the ground will soon stir themselves, somehow mustering the energy to grow – which is amazing, if you care to think about it.

Producing food under cover is becoming a more popular practice in this region – partly to reduce the risk of crop losses resulting from increasingly erratic weather, and partly to meet increased demand for fresh, local produce during periods when outdoor production would be impossible even in a good year. This trend raises all kinds of questions related to costs, sustainability, and dietary choice. Different farmers have different priorities, but there is a widespread desire to build up capacity and resilience, and clearly there is an appetite for information.

Perennia, Nova Scotia’s provincial agriculture development and extension agency, has rolled out a series of virtual workshops called TunnelTalk, running monthly through 2024, organized and moderated by Talia Plaskett, the agency’s protected crop specialist. These hour-long online meetings are meant to be a forum for all growers – regardless of size or preferred technology – to share their experiences, ask questions, and troubleshoot production challenges.

The Jan. 10 session featured guest presenter Anna Testen, a plant pathologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (and U.S. Borlaug Fellow in Global Food Security), whose recent work has focused on strategies for reducing the impacts of soilborne diseases in high tunnels, including the use of anaerobic soil disinfestation, grafting, and soil steaming. For Feb. 7, the scheduled topic is nutrient management planning in soil-based protected agriculture systems, featuring Caitlin McCavour, Perennia’s own soil specialist. On March 13, participants will learn about the efficacy of various products for controlling Botrytis (grey mould), with guest speaker Anissa Poleatewich, assistant professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe interactions at the University of New Hampshire (previously with the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Ontario). For April 3 and subsequent sessions, topics and presenters will be announced soon.

On Feb. 6, Perennia is presenting an online Q-and-A session devoted to “split nutrient applications” (adding fertility at different stages of the season) and the use of cover crops in protected growing systems. This is a follow-up to last year’s series of in-person field days devoted to best management practices for greenhouse soils, held in July with support from the federal On-Farm Climate Action Fund. The guest speaker, delivering presentations at four Nova Scotia farms, was Judson Reid, a senior extension associate at Cornell University (the agricultural college for the State of New York).

Reid highlighted common issues associated with overapplying nutrients. In protected systems, as in the field, excess nitrogen can be a problem because this highly mobile nutrient can leach into groundwater or volatilize as an atmospheric gas. In a crop such as tomatoes, high nitrogen levels can also cause excessive vegetative growth, potentially setting up internal competition for nutrients, depriving the fruit of potassium or calcium. Reid said relying on compost as a primary source of fertility, as many organic growers do, can result in nutrient imbalance. To avoid this, he advocates regular soil tests, plant tissue tests, nutrient analysis of amendments being applied, and precise applications of water-soluble fertilizer during the growing season, to correct deficiencies.

Plaskett says the field days were well attended, and participants expressed keen interest in the finer points of nutrient management, for environmental as well as economic reasons. She acknowledges that farmers have different views on what strategies are most appropriate, but she sees great value in sharing information and experiences.

“For some of the newer producers, or for producers who have a new greenhouse space, for example, we can kind of learn lessons from people who have been growing in the same space for five, 10, or 15-plus years,” she says. “I saw quite a few more tissue tests throughout the season last year, which was great – that’s a good way for us to assess the plant’s needs throughout the season – and then just having a lot more conversations about nutrient management planning early on in the year, which is fantastic.”

David and Jen Greenberg, of Abundant Acres Farm in Centre Burlington, N.S., hosted one of the summer field days, and they were enthusiastic about having the opportunity to engage with expert researchers and fellow growers. In the past, they have experienced nutrient problems due to excessive use of manure-based compost – especially compost containing a lot of ruminant urine, which is high in potassium. “We stopped using it and started using feather meal,” says David.

But one of the key points the Greenbergs have gleaned from other producers is the value of repeatedly topping up organic matter in their greenhouses – and this is their preferred approach, rather than relying on precision applications of specific nutrients. David says they are wary of a “reductionist” approach to soil health that leans heavily on chemistry, and instead they will continue to focus on biological activity, fostering carbon cycling in the soil.

“We bought a mower-conditioner, and a big buck-rake to scoop up windrowed hay; we’ll use it green,” he says. “We’ll let it go until it has the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio that we want – probably like 20-to-1, so it’s green enough to start composting but carboniferous enough that it won’t immediately turn to grass-clipping slime – and we’re going to play with that.”

Abundant Acres has some other changes and experiments on the agenda for 2024, and the Greenbergs are looking forward to sharing their results. Do they see sunny days ahead? Not so much. They see increasing input costs, worsening pest and disease issues due to climate change, and ongoing structural changes in this region’s horticulture sector. But they’re all in, and they’re hopeful. They believe the industry is now primarily attracting innovative new entrants who can rise to the challenge – people who would once have been called “alternative” growers. An adaptive approach to farming suits them well – and the Greenbergs have been impressed, over the past couple years, with the way Perennia has shown a commitment to working with food producers who want to try doing things differently. A purely prescriptive ag extension service would be of little use to such farmers.

*****

THANKS, FRED!

A final note to readers: 2024’s first issue of RD is the last issue for our longtime music columnist Fred Isenor, who is retiring from this lucrative gig after 32 years. A veteran bluegrass player and organizer on the East Coast scene, and a font of knowledge about old-time music and various other genres, Fred will be impossible to replace. However, we plan to continue the “Echoes” column, and we will occasionally pester him for assistance. For now, we just want to send out a big thank-you for all the information and stories he has shared through the years, his attention to detail, and his passion for music, which serves to bind together so many people from different walks of life. DL