#crop-health

#crop-health

Composting allows food scraps to be recycled into organic material for gardening, keeping waste out of landfills. However, not all tea bags are compostable.

Aquaponics systems utilize one gallon of water to produce a kilogram of leafy greens, compared to over 30 gallons in traditional farming, showcasing remarkable efficiency.

Plump, wiggly slugs may look innocuous, but they can wreak serious havoc on a carefully-curated garden, even causing total crop failure.

Using a sharp, sterile tool such as clippers or pruners is essential when harvesting peppers. Pulling them off by hand can damage the plant, leading to fewer fruits.

Bayer is supplementing human security patrols around its 8,000 acre Hawaiian corn farm with robotic security dogs, supplied by the tech firm Asylon. The Asylon dogs are meant to guard the company's precious maize from vandals, wildfires, wild fauna, and other hazards around the clock.

Grafting is the method through which two different plants from the same species or genus are joined together to grow as one. The resulting plant benefits from the qualities of the two different original plants.

The herd is Navajo-Churro, a heritage breed long tended by the Diné people of the American Southwest. Resilient and rooted in a fragile history, these sheep carry something beyond wool and weight.

"The awesome thing with pulse crops is no nitrogen needs... not having to put any nitrogen on a pulse crop is a great starting point," he says, noting that this allows growers to not only meet PKS requirements but, in some cases, build soil fertility for the rotation.

Starting plants from seed extends your relationship with the garden, gives you more control over seed sourcing, and saves real money compared to buying nursery starts, sometimes as much as 90% per plant.

Raised beds provide access to fresh food, even organic veggies and fruits if you choose, for a fraction of grocery store prices.

The term "soil fatigue" or exhaustion refers to the condition that soil profiles take on when they've been heavily monocropped and untended. This soil is devoid of the microbial content that offers plants bioavailable food. It lacks the fungal and bacterial organisms that interact with plant nutrients.

As concepts such as "regenerative" and "biodynamic" continue to enter the mainstream coffee lexicon, scientists continue to literally dig into the soil to give them meaning. A recent peer-reviewed study from India's Western Ghats argues that one of the clearest signals of healthy, sustainable coffee farms lies in the ground itself, with organic coffee soils performing better than soils from conventional farms treated with synthetic inputs.

"I've been with Syngenta for 28 years," Ramachandran says, noting that early travels across Canada shaped his passion for seed care. "What really stood out to me is seeing firsthand the passion, the resilience and the impact the growers made." Those experiences, combined with Canada's short growing season, continue to guide his work. "Everything that we have done... is around addressing those challenges, and how do we create solutions that are fit for purpose, for Canadian growers?"

When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.