Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Turning Yards into Productive Farms
Posted by Ben Handzo on October 31, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Categories:

    * Food System News


Imagine going to Home Depot and picking up a “1 Acre farm kit” that
would allow you to convert your 1-acre yard into a highly productive
suburban farm.

Researchers at Ohio State are working on a project that could have that
result. They’re developing a highly diverse pest resistant farm module
that would hopefully yield $10 a square foot, or about $90,000 an acre of
all of the produce were sold.

Check out more info in this article:
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=3379



http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=3379

 10/20/2005

Polyculture ‘Modules’ for Small Farms, Suburbia: Fewer Pests, $90,000
an Acre?

Writer:

Kurt Knebusch
knebusch.1@osu.edu
330-263-3776

Source:

Joe Kovach, OARDC, OSUE; Ohio IPM Program
kovach.49@osu.edu
330-263-3846

WOOSTER, Ohio — Carefully designed polyculture systems, grown on small
farms or even in suburban yards, could self-limit pest problems and gross
up to $90,000 per acre, says Joe Kovach, head of Ohio State University’s
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program.

Together with Loren Harper and Rosa Raudales, both also of the program,
Kovach has planned and planted four different polyculture systems, or
“modular ecological designs,” each combining the same wide mix of
high-value fruits and vegetables, annuals and perennials, tall crops and
short ones, into 45-by-60-foot plots.

The goal: To see which system works best based on yield, economics and pest
reduction — and to make, by selling retail, $10 per linear foot, or
$90,000 to $100,000 per acre.

“We’ve known in pest management that polyculture systems seem to have
fewer pest problems than monocultures, and when there are problems,
they’re usually less severe,” Kovach said. “We wanted to see if we
could come up with a primarily fruit-based system that, if we arranged it
in the correct way, would see fewer pest problems.”

At the same time, though, “With a goal of $10 per linear foot, we’ve
got to be productive,” he said. “We can’t mess around.”

Polycultures, as opposed to monocultures, grow two or more crops together,
not just one.

Kovach’s four designs, even more diverse than typical polycultures,
combine apples, peaches, green beans, tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries,
raspberries and edamame soybeans. But each design tests a different
arrangement. The first has solid rows, with each row having a single crop,
and the crop height switching from row to row: for example, a row of high
apple trees, a row of low strawberries, a row of high peach trees, a row of
low tomatoes.

“There’s some hint that architecture might have an impact on insect
pests that occur,” Kovach explained, “so we decided we’d use tree and
shrub crops alternated with lower-growing crops.”

The second design mixes more than one crop within a row but keeps the high
crops and low crops together in their own rows. Apples, peaches and
raspberries, for example, would line up in a row, then green beans,
strawberries and tomatoes in the next, as a way to roadblock infestations.

“The concept,” Kovach said, “is that insect pests seem to move down
rows. So if you’re an apple pest, you might stop at the peaches. A peach
pest might stop at the raspberries. A raspberry pest at the blueberries.
And so forth.”

The third design goes a step further. It mixes the crops within a row and
also alternates heights in the row. A single row might grow apples then
strawberries, peaches then green beans, raspberries then tomatoes. Kovach
calls it the “checkerboard” system.

The fourth design adds raised beds to the equation — “kind of our
souped-up future strategy,” Kovach said — with mixed rows planted
within.

All four designs employ drip irrigation, disease-tolerant and -resistant
varieties, fencing against rabbits and woodchucks, staggered planting dates
for the annuals and maturity dates for the perennials (allowing for early,
mid- and late-season harvest and season-long production), and newer,
less-toxic pesticides if and as needed, with sustainability, not
100-percent organic production, the goal.

“Once we find this optimum design — and this is where the ‘modular’
aspect comes in — we’ll know how much food you’ll get from one
plot,” Kovach said. “Maybe one is all you need for personal use. Or
maybe you run a roadside stand; you could have maybe three in a series. Or
maybe you sell at a farmers’ market; you could have, say, six or
eight.”

Small farms near cities could gain from such setups, Kovach said. Fewer
inputs, a steady lineup of high-value crops, and proximity to thousands of
hungry consumers would make the farms even more successful.

Homeowners, whether for food, hobby or both, could use the modules too.

“We have a lot of these suburban houses that have five-acre lots,”
Kovach noted. “People spend a lot of time mowing their lawn. This could
be an opportunity to do something else.”

Finally, he said, the modules would ramp up local production, a plus in
terms of tastier food and lower transportation costs.

The project, funded by the Ohio IPM program, a joint effort of OSU
Extension and the university’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development
Center (OARDC), will continue for the next five or six years.

The test plots — 16 in all, four replications of all four designs,
covering a total of 1.5 acres — lie on OARDC’s Wooster campus.
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