Organic soil fertility management for vegetables will be the focus of
two on-farm field days sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-
Madison”s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems in October.

The first field day will be held on October 22 on the farm of Henry
Brockman in Woodford County, Illinois. A second field day will be
held on October 29 at Tipi Produce in Rock County, Wisconsin. Both
farms are part of a two-state project examining the costs and
benefits of soil fertility management strategies on organic vegetable
farms.

At these events, growers will discuss their use of cover crops,
rotations, compost and purchased inputs. University specialists and
project staff will be on hand to answer questions and share project
results.

“One of the main goals of this project was to simply quantify and
qualify the fertility management practices used by organic vegetable
growers,” said project coordinator John Hendrickson.

Hendrickson added, “Prior to this project, there was only anecdotal
evidence-and unverified assumptions-about how vegetable growers were
getting needed fertility to their high value crops.”

One such assumption was that many organic growers rely heavily on
imported fertilizers based on chicken manure. This project found more
complex soil fertility management strategies, with growers utilizing
soil-building fallow periods and annual cover crops in addition to
purchased inputs.

Henry Brockman will discuss his system that involves rotating
vegetables with managed grazing of beef cattle, in addition to cover
crops and compost. Brockman”s farm is located at 1563 County Road 400
North, Congerville, Illinois. This field day will be held from 1-4pm.

At Tipi Produce, veteran farmer Steve Pincus will highlight his use
of on-farm nitrogen production in the form of alfalfa mulch. The
address for Tipi Produce is 14706 West Ahara Road, Evansville,
Wisconsin. This field day is scheduled from 1:30-4:30pm.

For detailed information about these field days, including directions
to the farms, visit www.cias.wisc.edu.

The USDA North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and
Education (SARE) program provided support for these field days and
the larger research project. For more information, contact John
Hendrickson: 608-265-3704 or jhendric@wisc.edu.