Throughout spring, the white or light pink, funnel-shaped flowers of wild morning glory graced many roadsides in the Northeast. With help from UConn Cooperative Extension, I’m able to provide information on this pretty flower. The scientific name is Convulvulus sepium (“of hedges” or “of fences”), e...

As crop growers enter late August, especially across the northern U.S., they become quite aware of night temperatures starting to drop. Such happening starts slowing the production of warm season crops (soybean, corn, sorghum, sudangrass, their hybrids and millets). As these warm season crops start ...

Dietitians tell us that a person consuming an 8-oz. glass of cow’s milk is ingesting approximately 232 mg of phosphorus (P), a nutrient vital for bone health, energy metabolism and cellular function. Taking these numbers further, I calculate that approximately 1 lb. of elemental P departs the farm i...

On July 23, I was invited by Uri to perform extensive soil sampling on his farm in eastern Chenango County, NY. I’ve been advising Uri in his organic crop program for a couple decades, taking lots of soil samples for him over the years. I met Uri in September 1964 at Cornell University. I was an ag ...

Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” This phrase linked the French term déjà vu, meaning “already seen,” to the English phrase “all over again,” creating a humorous repetition. Much of the Northeast has recently experienced a major wildfire smoke invasion, comp...

The Brassica genus boasts in its membership many of our most well-known vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, rutabaga, turnips, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, collards, kale, mustard and more. My first contact with this genus as a source of soil fumigants occurred about 20 years ago. At the time...

Just as summer 2026 was getting started, I stumbled into three situations where cattlemen reported incidence of foot rot in their livestock. Two of the individuals I work with in an advisory capacity – one a dairyman, the other a beef (mostly Angus) farmer. A discussion of foot rot should logically ...

As I’m writing this column early on June 30, the weather forecast for the Utica area spotlighted this headline: “Dangerous heat to hit parts of U.S. ahead of July 4” – with worst hit areas being the Northeast. According to David Robinson, climatologist at Rutgers University, “A heat dome (hitting th...

My favorite local honey is buckwheat-based. Honey consumers typically believe that the human health benefits of this food are greater if the beehives are situated near where that consumer lives. Bears appear to share this mindset. Honeybees are critical for the pollination of this plant species, whi...

About a month after the Strait of Hormuz blockade began, a farmer named Ken called me, asking me to formulate fertilizers for his small cropping operation in southern Onondaga County. Ken grows corn for grain, soybeans and mixed mostly grass hay. He sent me soil test results for each of the three fi...

According to John Idowu, Ph.D., plant science Extension agronomist at New Mexico State University, soil compaction can greatly challenge cropland performance and reduce yields, depending on the type of crop grown. However, there are many strategies that producers can use to minimize soil compaction ...

“Most corn is in the ground. Fields that were weather-caused fallow can still produce a very high-quality forage from sorghum. Sorghum is planted after corn because the soil has to be warmer than for corn for rapid germination. Thus, planting after early winter triticale and haylage harvest gets tho...

In a video clip filmed in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a 4WD truck grew mired. Its 60 PSI tires dug deeper and deeper, rendering the vehicle helpless as its operator tried to back away from the mess. The narrator reduced tire pressure to 15 PSI, enabling the truck to easily back out of its sand tra...

According to Dan Quinn, Purdue University agronomist, examining corn ears from your fields helps estimate what yield might be. Examining corn ears prior to harvest helps growers visualize how the corn plant was impacted by different factors throughout the growing season, and why their yields may be ...

Three years ago, Canadian wildfires were ramping up. The maximum impact was felt in the northern tier of the U.S. during the second week of June 2023. Firefighters scrambled to put out blazes in Quebec, where more than 160 forest fires were roaring. These fires were fueled by high temperatures and d...