Challenges & Responses
Each farmer panelist shared their top pest, disease, and weed pressures, along with the hard-won knowledge of what works and doesn’t work against these pressures on their farm.
Sarahlee Lawrence of Rainshadow Organics (Oregon):
Sarahlee Lawrence (Rainshadow Organics) shared that central Oregon, which is considered high desert, suffers from ongoing drought and high summer temperatures, facilitating aphids on their kale and spider mites on cucumbers, tomatillos, and eggplant.
“Cinerate is a cinnamon-based product that we’ve been pretty excited about for our hoop houses.” Lawrence shared that using this broad-spectrum fungicide/bactericide on susceptible crops, before heat and drought could further weaken their defenses, has proven successful.
This year brought a new pest and virus challenge. When four acres of beets were starting to shrivel, Lawrence decided to engage research support from Oregon State University (OSU). She shipped samples to OSU, where they identified beet curly top virus (BCTV), vectored by the beet leafhopper. While the cost for testing and a slow response time posed slight challenges, Lawrence shared that “in the grand scheme of things, it felt very worth it to be able to identify the fact that we do indeed have beet curly top virus, which affects almost everything we grow.”
This confirmation helped Lawrence and her partner dive into possible solutions and connect with a researcher at Washington State University who specialized in BCTV and leafhoppers and their hugely detrimental impact on Columbia Basin farms.
“I did lose two successions of beets, and in my third succession, I was able to spray with neem oil as a deterrent blanket. You can’t really kill them [flea beetles]; they’re so mobile, and that’s not really how we approach things anyway here. We try to just have airflow and healthy plants; we do a lot of our own biodynamic teas and cultivate our soil and the soil community. These things interact to help the plants overcome these challenges.”
While Sarahlee and her team are still testing various approaches to eradicate this issue and mitigate damage, Dr. Orpet echoed the wisdom in Lawrence’s approach of reaching out to researchers, and he also recommends local Extension support. He spoke, too, about weighing the costs and benefits of aggressive (and often costly) treatments for this type of crop pressure.
According to Dr. Orpet, farmers must clarify their economic threshold for treating these issues and whether the cost of intervention (spraying, etc.) will outweigh the cost of damage done. Seeking support from local Extension reps can help farmers gain a clearer picture of this threshold, while also offering possible solutions.
Ellie Costello of Trust Land Farm (Montana)
In Montana, Ellie Costello noted that her current focus is on crop planning to meet market and sustainability goals and address challenges from seasons past.
“We are heavy greens-based operations, both for cut salad mixes and bunch greens. That’s the bulk of what we do for restaurants, wholesale, and direct sales. So having enough space between where things are planted from year to year in the brassica family to cut off flea beetles, which are one of our biggest pests, is really challenging.”
Even with strong crop rotations and minimal overlap, flea beetles are a tenacious pest, and Costello and her team are working to understand why certain spots harbor the beetles and continue to refine their rotation process. “We blocked all of our crops so that we can cut that off well.”
Dr. Orpet confirmed that flea beetles are “one of a trifecta: flea beetles, cucumber beetles, and squash bugs. That trifecta is what vegetable farmers have the biggest problem with.”
Sarahlee Lawrence shared that at Rainshadow Organics, they’ve had success with beneficial nematodes, insect netting, and crop rotation. “I also hit my brassicas that really get destroyed with a neem and safer soap cocktail that has really knocked back the population this year. And this is actually the first year I’ve ever had Napa cabbage and Asian greens that are marketable.”
