CALIFORNIA
Vegetables A SPECIAL GROWERS’ REPORT OF AG ALERT ®
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The Center for Agroecology farm at the University of California, Santa Cruz, collaborates with farmers and others on research to improve organic farming practices and increase sustainability.
UC researchers look at soil, no-till for organic crops By Bob Johnson
variety of lethal soil-borne diseases. Weeds are controlled in the research plots by planting a mustard cover crop, which can be killed by a mower in early spring. The university farm at UC Santa Cruz is also home to ongoing studies to develop a no-till- age system for growing organic vegetables. Researchers are studying how much the no-till system encourages the buildup of carbon in the soil, which helps mitigate climate change. In addition to these long-term research projects, the farm serves as a classroom where future farmers and researchers learn the basics of sustainable farming. “We have had an outsized impact for our 30-acre footprint,” said Darryl Wong, UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology executive director and the lead investigator for the no-till study. The idea of the UC Santa Cruz farm took root in 1967, when English gardening expert Alan Chadwick and a group of students turned a challenging hillside campus location into a productive farm using nothing but hand tools and organic methods. Four years later, campus administrators set aside a larger portion of the meadow as a farm.
The method used on thousands of acres by organic strawberry growers to rid their soil of diseases that could destroy the crop was first tested and refined on a 30-acre hillside farm at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Known as anaerobic soil disinfestation, a source of organic matter is incorporated in the soil. It is then tarped and kept irrigated to field capacity for weeks or months, which kills 80-100% of the verticillium
pathogens and half the macrophomina pathogens. At the campus farm, UC Cooperative Extension organic production specialist Joji Muramoto, who has studied the technique for strawberries on the farm for more than a decade, continues this ongoing research. In studying this method, Muramoto learned that rice bran is the most economical source of organic material in California. He has fine-tuned the amount that has to be incorporated, noting the technique should be used only on fusarium during the warmer months. Anaerobic soil disinfestation is used by nearly half the state’s organic strawberry growers to treat the soil. They have no other economical technique to manage a
See FARM, Page 12
August 23, 2023 Ag Alert 11
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