Dale Gies says of growing mustard greens,” We didn’t start this project to eliminate the use of chemicals. It was thought that it could help, but nobody had ever done it commercially. We just wanted to keep the soil on our potato farm in Moses Lake, Wash., from blowing away. The fact that we’ve been … Read more
Organic apple production has expanded in the U.S. since the turn of the century. The state of Washington, especially, has added organic apple acreage. According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, about 90 percent of the nation’s organic apple acreage is in the Evergreen State. In the Northeast, organic apple growing is just at the … Read more
Bringing a new crop to market can be difficult for a farmer or even a group of farmers. However, a group of potato growers along the Oregon/California border, beset with declining profits for their crops over the decades, decided they needed a crop that could bring more value to their farms. They set up a … Read more
Pears, peaches and much more A dirt road leads up a hill to Blum Ranch in Acton, Calif., where the Blum family has been growing peaches, pears and lilacs, and keeping bees for more than a hundred years. In 1891, George Blum, a Swiss stonecutter working in Los Angeles, was looking for a better life … Read more
Making tough decisions easier When it comes to making decisions for orchard management, it’s no longer a simple matter of removing a McIntosh block and replacing it with Honeycrisp. Growers need answers to questions such as: How much will plant density influence profit? Can I save money by incorporating new technology such as a platform? … Read more