John Bell is an organic grower and cattle farmer from Georgetown, Kentucky. John co-manages the sixth-generation Elmwood Stock Farm and in this episode, he shares with us his insight on using mesotunnels for organic cucurbit crops and the challenges faced when managing a 550-acre family farm.
Nov 9, 2021
32 min
Cost ratio, cost-efficiency ratio, payback time, grower survey…fairly nerdy words if you are not an economist, right? In this episode Dr. Zhang, associate professor with the Economics Department (ISU), walks us through these concepts and the importance of including socio-economic analysis into the science we do in the field.
Nov 2, 2021
40 min
In this episode, Dr. Iles helps us understand the importance of knowing your enemy. Insect pests have particular life cycles, behaviors, and biological relationships. To provide good insect pest control we need to know their weak points, more so when talking about organic pest management, where insecticide sprays are limited in terms of efficiency and residuality. Two insects are of main interest for our research: cucumber beetles, and squash bugs (if you listened to episode 1 of this series you should know why!).
Oct 26, 2021
32 min
What is a phage? Is biocontrol a real possibility for controlling diseases in organic production of cucurbit crops? Find this and more in this episode with the renowned ISU bacteriologist Dr. Gwyn Beattie
Oct 19, 2021
32 min
Dr. Ric Bessin -a long-experienced extension specialist and entomologist from the University of Kentucky- shares his thoughts regarding mesotunnel production systems for cucurbit crops, focusing on the capabilities and challenges that using this type of crop protection brings for growers.
Oct 12, 2021
33 min
Why do we care about pollination? What are we doing to prevent an unsuccessful pollination? Are insecticides -even organic ones- bad for pollinators? What have they found in Kentucky about the relationship of pollination and mesotunnels? These and much more subjects are covered in this interview with Dr. David Gonthier, entomologist with University of Kentucky.
Oct 5, 2021
32 min
In this episode (recorded in late 2020) of The Current Cucurbit podcast series, plant pathologist Dr. Sarah Pethybridge (one of the project's co-PI's with Cornell University) talks about her experience doing research on mesotunnels based in Cornell (NY) and plans for 2021.
Sep 28, 2021
26 min
In this introductory episode of The Current Cucurbit podcast series, Dr. Gleason (project leader) sketches out our research on mesotunnels as an option for organic growers.
Part of the challenge for mesotunnels is to stop two devastating diseases: bacterial wilt (caused by Erwinia tracheiphila) and CYVD (cucurbit yellow vine disease, caused by Serratia marcescens). The podcast explains how mesotunnels can meet this challenge.
This series can help you decide if mesotunnels make sense for your farm.
Sep 21, 2021
37 min