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Smaller and Lighter Beehives Are Better

Photo 1 – A complete, two-queen, side-by-side hive. Each side is a stack of three four-frame medium boxes. Entrances to the hives are on opposite ends, minimizing drift of bees from one box to its neighbor. Photo 2 – Hive components specific to a two-queen, side-by-side, four-frame hive shown from front to back: an inner

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Agroforestry With Plants of the Eastern Deciduous Forest

A blight-resistant American chestnut tree growing at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. Butternuts shown in the Exhibition Hall of the Common Ground Country Fair by Claudette Nadeau. Aronia melanocarpa growing at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. Permaculture with a native twist By Heather McCargo     Agroforestry is the practice of adding trees and shrubs to

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The Sweet Spot

Drawing by Toki Oshima By Jacki Martinez Perkins The dairy industry has found itself in the same position that many small businesses encountered during the past few decades. Small farms are being driven out of business by the natural progression of capitalism. Large-scale dairies can operate at lower costs per cow, negotiate their price points and own

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Rapid Apple Decline

An apple tree showing signs of stress – possibly Rapid Apple Decline. English photo By C.J. Walke In March of this year, numerous reports of apple tree die-off populated the news with titles such as “Across America, Apple Trees are Dying, and Scientists Don’t Know Why” and “Something is Killing Our Apple Trees, and No One Knows

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Terraces in Ancient Jerusalem

Terraces at Sataf in the Jerusalem Corridor. Photo courtesy of the photo archive of the Jewish National Fund. Spring water at Sataf flowing into the second plot. Photo by Deborah Rubin Fields Patch cultivation or box fields in the Modin area. Photo courtesy of Dr. Rafael Lewis, from a 2017 article co-authored with Prof. Shimon

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Edible Podded Peas

Snow pea flowers. From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg#/media/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg Snow pea. By JS – JS, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10690536 Super Sugar Snap peas. Photo courtesy of Johnny’s Selected Seeds By Will Bonsall When I was a kid, “peas” meant either the fresh (or canned or frozen) “garden peas” we enjoyed in early summer, or the “field peas” we ate as split

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Spinach Downy Mildew

Downy mildew on winter spinach in a high tunnel. Photo by Eric Sideman By Caleb Goossen, Ph.D. Winter-grown greens have increased dramatically in popularity, and subsequently in ubiquity, over the past couple of decades. We are miles beyond the era of my grandmother’s childhood in northern Vermont, where the “hungry period” set in during the end of winter

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Spotted Lanternfly

Spotted lanternfly, screenshot of photo by Henripekka Kallio from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perho.jpg, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license Tree-of-heaven, seed-bearing female plant, photo by Luis Fernández García from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139593, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.1 Spain license. By C.J. Walke As winter rolls into spring, work in the orchard transitions from pruning and

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10 Q & As About Emerald Ash Borer

Emerald ash borer shown on a penny for size comparison. Photo by Howard Russell, Michigan State University, Bugwood.org, from https://www.invasive.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1241011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Flecked bark resulting from woodpecker feeding on emerald ash borers. Photo by Kenneth R. Law, USDA APHIS PPQ, Bugwood.org, from https://www.invasive.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5471784. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution

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Passing the Baton

Whip and tongue graft. Illustration by John Bunker Bark graft. Illustration by John Bunker Delton Curtis grafting at the Seed Swap and Scion Exchange. English photo By John Bunker Not everyone knows that when you start an apple tree from a seed, it will never come true to type. If you plant a ‘McIntosh’ seed and wait about

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