10 Tips for Better Crop Spraying

Small drops take time to hit target.

A tiny droplet 100 microns in diameter (about the diameter of a human hair) takes 11 seconds to fall 10 feet. At 50 microns, it takes 40 seconds to fall that far, because of the drag that air friction puts on them. That’s a long time for a wind current to move that droplet to an unintended target.

“Those tiny droplets really slow down when they leave the nozzle,” says Hanna. “The other important part of that is that you may think you can crank up the pressure and drive those small droplets down into the crop canopy. It doesn’t work because they slow down so fast.”

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Influence of intercropped groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) on the performance of weed control treatments in maize production

Field trials were conducted in 2007 and 2008 early and late wet seasons, respectively at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (070 20`N, 30 23`E) in the forest-savanna transition agroecological zone of South-western Nigeria. Five weed control treatments viz pre-emergence application of commercial formulation of metolachlor plus prometryne (Codal GoldR, 412 EC) at 1.6kg a.i/ha alone, 1.6kg a.i/ha followed by supplementary hoe weeding at 6 weeks after planting (WAP), 2.4kg a.i/ha, two hoe weedings at 3 and 6 WAP and a weedy check were assigned to the main plots while intercropping methods which included four combinations of groundnuts between rows of maize spaced at 50cm and 75cm, as well as sole crops of maize and groundnut constituted the sub-plot treatments. Intercropped groundnut significantly suppressed weed infestation compared with the sole crops of maize and groundnut. Weed infestation was consistently lower in maize planted at intrarow spacing of 75cm in mixture with three groundnut stands in the inter-row between two maize stands and maize planted at 50cm in similar mixture with two groundnut stands compared with the other cropping methods. In both years of study, maximum cob and grain yields were obtained with sole maize spaced at 50cm within rows. Intercropped maize at 75cm produced grain yield comparable to the corresponding sole crop in both years. Intercropped groundnut in maize spaced at 50cm significantly reduced grain yield of maize in 2007 and non-significantly in 2008 compared to the corresponding sole crop. All the weed control methods evaluated resulted in significantly lower weed cover score than the weedy check.

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Volume 5, Number 6, December 2014 – IJAAR

8 Tips for Beginner Farmers’ Market Vendors

You won’t be alone in embracing farmers’ markets. According to the USDA, as of mid-2010 more than 6,100 farmers’ markets operated throughout the U.S., a 16-percent increase from 2009. With continued interest in local foods, shoppers find farmers’ markets the best opportunity to “know your farmer” and bring healthy, fresh food to their family’s plate.

But as with any farm-based venture, selling at a farmers’ market should be a well-thought-out, strategic part of your farm-management plan. Here are some tips to get started.

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47 Tips and Tricks for Farm Marketing

After 10 years of working in and around Community Supported Agriculture and compiled this master list of marketing tips from our experience. Not running a CSA program? There are plenty of tips and tricks that you can use to market your farm stand or wholesale business. Check out just a few of the tips below.

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