Providing a diverse offering of vegetables for early spring CSA shares and markets can be a challenge. Offerings usually consists of leftover storage root crops, salad greens, and radishes. Due to their cold tolerance and quick growth, brassicas are promising crops for cool spring high tunnel environments. Last spring, we trialed two varieties of sprouting broccoli and four varieties of small cabbages at the Cornell Willsboro Research Farm to develop seeding date and variety recommendations for our region. We harvested fresh broccoli and tender cabbages in mid-May—excellent timing for the start up of farmers market season.

Our colleagues Christy Hoepting and Chris Smart are excited to be part of a 4-year USDA multi-state project on Alternaria leaf spot and head rot in broccoli, which is starting this growing season. This "Control Alt Delete" project will utilize genomics, population genetics and fungicide resistance profiling to understand the Alternaria pathogen(s) that attack brassicas - "get to know the enemy" so-to-speak. Plus, the project aims to design practical and economically sound strategies to limit losses from Alternaria, which will be relevant to all brassica crops.

Report of the 2019 Long Island Heat Tolerant Broccoli and Cauliflower Variety Trial conducted by Sandra Menasha of CCE Suffolk.

Our New England colleagues have launched a regional project related Brassicas, and New York growers and colleagues are welcome and encouraged to join in.

The Brassica Pest Collaborative is intended as a place where growers and extension folks can talk to each other and share observations and questions throughout the season so feel welcome to join and contribute all things Brassica! They are also looking for more growers to join that list and to sign up as collaborators who will implement a practice and collect some scouting records to help them assess efficacy of given practices on real farms. Growers can sign up by emailing brassicapest@umass.edu and include information about your farm, pest issue and what strategy you would like to try to implement.

A product called LandSpring was labeled in NY back in July of 2017 and may help reduce transplant shock of certain crops.  Learn more about what it is and how it works.

The 2010 Broccoli Variety Trail consisted of 27 entries from 7 seed companies. Industry standards included Diplomat, Gypsy, Green Magic, Imperial and Windsor. Two varieties, Major and Bl 10, were included to evaluate heat tolerance.

See complete report below