When we harvest hay crop silages, naturally occurring bacteria present on the forage are responsible for completing the fermentation process we rely on to preserve the silage. During fermentation, bacteria take sugars in the forage and convert it into organic acids that acidify the material and preserve nutrients. Goals for good silage fermentation: 1. Rapid …
Continue reading “Evaluating Hay Crop Silage Inoculants for Use in Organic Systems”
Course Content UVM Research Specialists Amber Machia and Sara Ziegler have developed a new online course designed for technical assistance providers. The goal of this course is to provide education and resources for new technical service providers with foundational information around grazing planning and providing grazing-related technical assistance to production livestock farmers in Vermont. This …
Summer annual grasses, such as sudangrass and millet, can be good emergency forage crops if your feed inventory is low or you want to supplement pastures during the hot summer months. These grasses love heat and only need a few months to yield 3 to 5 tons of highly digestible dry matter per acre. There …
Continue reading “Summer Annual Forages Fill Inventory Gaps “
By Bryony Sands Spring has finally arrived! Cows are being turned out to pasture, and farmers are busy out in the field. This season is full of new life, but a familiar parasitic arachnid is once again putting a damper on things. Tick populations are becoming more active, and they are on the rise in …
Written by Heather Darby Given the delayed planting of corn due to wet and in many cases saturated soil conditions, farmers are asking, “What relative maturity of corn will be harvested before the first killing frost?” Well, as always, the answer is, “It depends.” As we head into the last week of May, there are …
Continue reading “Selecting a Corn Maturity for Late-Planted Corn”
Written by Jeff Sanders Corn is a Survivor There are two kinds of crops: crops that struggle to survive and crops that fight to survive. A cotton farmer in Texas once told me that all cotton wants to do is die as soon as it comes out of the ground. Corn is not that way …
Continue reading “Mastering No-Till Corn in Vermont: Lessons from the Field”
It’s a winning story for farmers, producers, retailers, and ultimately customers. At the UVM Extension Northwest Crops and Soils (NWCS) program, most of our research happens in the field while planting, growing, and harvesting crops to understand how they perform under different conditions and management practices. However, the NWCS research doesn’t stop when the crop …
“If you can manage your soil well, that’s like wealth.” “If you can manage your soil well, that’s like wealth,” Deborah Neher, Soil Ecologist and Associate Director of SHREC, said when explaining the significance of the new Soil Health Research and Extension Center (SHREC) at the University of Vermont. The SHREC is a cross-disciplinary research …
On March 11, 2025 our friends Patricia Bishop and Josh Oulton drove with their daughter Lily from Nova Scotia to the Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh, Vermont to hand deliver a new hemp fiber hackler to the UVM extension NWCS team. They somehow managed to fit it into the back of a sprinter van, and …
Every season is hemp season! This winter, Northwest Crops & Soils Program (NWCS) is exploring winter retting as an option for Vermont farms looking to grow textile-grade hemp. Retting is a necessary process that bast fiber crops must undergo to release and separate the natural fibers found in the stalk. Typically, this process commences in …