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...

Around mid-April, a reader from western New York asked me a question about prussic acid. Before I discuss our conversation, I’ll share some background information. For a long time prior to this phone call, I thought that term had a German origin. With some online sleuthing, I learned that the term o...

As I’m writing this column in late April’s pre-dawn, it appears that spring has not quite grabbed the climate reins from winter. Autmn-planted winter annuals are looking pretty good – crops like wheat, rye, triticale, barley and speltz. But perennial crops are taking their sweet time breaking dorman...

The U.S. plants significantly less acreage of this summer annual than it did a century ago. Buckwheat was once a much more widespread crop before the late Industrial Revolution introduced new technologies. The center-point of such technologies were fertilizers based on chemical ingredients which inc...

Ten days after spring 2026 started, a serious electric storm hit our part of Central New York. During the early pre-dawn, lightning bolts struck (fortunately not too close to us). This electric storm was caused by the southern branch of the northern jet stream surging northward. In such an event, a ...

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization) pronounced judgment against the herbicide ingredient glyphosate. IARC said that glyphosate “probably causes cancer in humans.” Most of the pillars in the ag chemical community opposed that declarat...

According to the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary, “Spring snow, also called corn snow or granular snow, is a coarse granular, wet snow, resembling finely chopped melted ice.” Wet snow falling on tall, sturdy trees can break branches; the problem is even worse on immature trees. With lanky...

There are five days left of winter as I’m writing this column. Winter has been colder than normal for most of the Northeast, a fact reflected in our electric bill and fuel oil consumption. Utica’s official snowfall has been about a third higher than normal, a claim which our village of Hartwick (35 ...

In 1972, then-President Richard Nixon expressed great worry that most of America’s supply of imported oil could become quite vulnerable to a strangle-hold focused on the Strait of Hormuz. Such a constriction could be enacted by our adversaries in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is approximatel...