The academic buildings tend to be quiet at Hampshire College during the summer. But down at the Hampshire College Farm, our 15 acres of vegetable fields and 65 acres of pasture serve as a living classroom and laboratory for the students of our 6 week Food, Farm, and Sustainability Institute.
Brian Schultz, Professor of Entomology and Ecology, is currently leading students in a hands-on experiment at the farm. With the help of Hampshire’s CSA Manager and vegetable grower Nancy Hanson and her crew of student workers, Schultz and the Food, Farm, and Sustainability students will explore the effectiveness of WeedGuard, a completely biodegradable agricultural sheet mulch used to block weeds. Schultz and Hanson hope to determine if WeedGuard will help alleviate pest pressure from Striped Cucumber Beetles and Squash Bugs.
- Hampshire students are encouraged to utilize the farm as an academic resource for projects and divisional work.
Dan Goldhamer (F’02) is a Hampshire alum who worked with Hanson at the Hampshire College Farm and does product testing for the Sunshine Paper Company that manufactures WeedGuard. Upon reading about Hampshire’s Healthy Food Transition and the increased production at the farm in an alumni publication, Goldhamer reached out to Hanson and initiated the collaboration between the Hampshire College Farm and Sunshine Paper Company, which donated the materials and supplied additional funding for the study.
The farm crew prepares the beds by covering them with black plastic mulch and WeedGuard before transplanting.
Hanson and the farm interns stayed hours after their usual Friday quitting time last weekend to help Schultz apply the WeedGuard cover and transplant cucumber and butternut squash transplants into the covered beds. The experimental design consists of two 200 foot beds of squash and and two 200 foot beds of cucumbers with WeedGuard cover, conventional black plastic cover, and bare soil control, with four replications of each treatment. The crops will be grown following organic practices, like all of the produce at the Hampshire College Farm.
Since it is a working farm, the vegetables produced in this study will make their way to the dining hall as part of our 100% Local Foods Challenge. Bon Appetit, Hampshire’s food service provider, has plans to make pickles from the cucumbers to serve in the dining hall this fall.
Food, Farm, and Sustainability students dipping squash plants in Organic Kaolin Clay to protect them from pests.
Schultz and the Food, Farm, and Sustainability students will be collecting data throughout the summer including weekly insect and plant counts, plant survival rate, days to harvest for each of the different treatments, total fruit yields, soil temperature comparisons, and emergent weed counts. Nancy Hanson will be providing input from the growers perspective about the practicality of the product and how it compares to similar mulching materials. The study will conclude with a written analysis of the data and will be shared with the Sunshine Paper Company. Interesting results may be published in the UMass Extension’s “Vegetable Notes” or the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association) monthly newsletter so stay tuned!
