New England Brassica School

Growing & Marketing High Quality Brassica Crops

Sturbridge Host Hotel
Sturbridge, MA
Tuesday, March 6 2007
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Complete Handbook
(this is a fairly large file (32MB) and may take some time to download with slow connections)

Why the Brassica School?

Over the past two years UMass Extension and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station have been working closely with nine growers to help them improve some aspect of their Brassica crop production. These growers, together with UMass and CAES personnel and consultants, came together in the winter of 2005 to set goals and determine a course of action that would allow them to meet those goals. The topics covered included marketing niche crops, season extension, fertility management,pest and disease control, and improved cultural practices for specific crops. Over next two years these growers implemented their strategies and kept records to chart their progress. We visited growers periodically throughout the season to offer information and advice where we could. We also conducted some formal research into production questions. As the culmination of this two-year project, we hosted a 'Brassica School' to share the experiences of these nine growers and to bring in speakers to explore some of these topics in more depth. This program was designed to be of interest to all growers of these crops, from the small scale farm stand grower to the large wholesale operation; conventional, IPM, and organic farms; and anyone else who has an interesting in growing and marketing high quality Brassicas. This project has been funded by a grant from the Northeast SARE program of USDA/CSREES.

The School went well, and we hope that all who attended came away armed with fresh ideas and new information. Working on this kind of a grower driven project was very satisfying, and we hope to be able to do more of this kind of work in the future. We'd like to offer special thanks to all of our excellent speakers and to the growers who worked so hard to make this project as successful as it was.

The growers involved in this project were:

Edwin Matuszko

Twin Oaks Farm

Growing and Marketing 'mini' cabbages

Amy Klippenstien

Sidehill Farm

Season extension for brassica greens and developing an effective system for crop by crop financial analysis

Jamie Barrett

Appleton Farm

Improved cultural strategies for broccoli and brussels sprouts and improved management of cabbage maggot in root crops

Sam Hammer

Holcomb Farm CSA

Season extension in brassica greens and improved management of cabbage maggot in root crops

Nou Yang

New Entry Sustainable Agriculture

Improved pest and weed management, improved understanding of fertility management

Dave Dumaresq

Brox Farm

Extending the broccoli harvest through selection of heat and cold tolerant varieties

Ricky Baruc

Seeds of Solidarity Farm

Pest identification and control in organic brassica production and season extension for leafy brassicas

Kathy Caruso

Upper Forty Farm

Improved cultural methods for broccoli production

Walter Griest

Mill River Valley Garden CSA

Developing a novel system for securing row cover

If you would like to purchase a hard copy of the handbook, please contact Andrew Cavanagh at acavanagh@psis.umass.edu or by phone at 413-577-3976.


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