Thursday, March 19th from 1–3:30 PM at the Ag Hall

In this workshop, Sue Scheufele of UMass Extension will dive deeper into the pest management strategies she covered last year. Dr. Rachel Hestrin from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass will also be present to answer farmer questions about soil microbiology, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and anything else.

The first part of the workshop will focus on getting the most out of organic pesticides. In this session we will learn some of the key pesticides that organic growers should know and develop an understanding of how they work so that you can make better decisions about when to use which one on which pest. The presentation will focus on vegetable pests but the information is relevant to tree fruits, berries, flowers, and more.

The second part of the workshop will focus on understanding downy mildews. In this session we will talk about downy mildew biology and how we can utilize that to our advantage to get better control by using cultural controls, resistant varieties, and fungicides. The presentation will focus on basil and cucurbit downy mildews but we can tackle other downy mildews during Q&A.

COST: FREE and open to all island farmers and farmworkers. Lunch provided, registration appreciated. Sign up below!