Pennsylvania IPM Grower
| Myrtle Hetherington Pennsylvania IPM Grower |
|
photo by Carrie Koplinka-Loehr
"Let me show you my rock mulch," smiles Myrtle Hetherington.
She picks up a handful of red clay shards-not quite the rich organic loam
that one might expect. "This shale holds the moisture. The tomato plants
love it." She flips over a rock and sure enough, it is wet underneath.
How that soil can support 125 acres of vegetables and more than 200 acres
of oats, hay, and grain is a wonder, but for Myrtle and her brothers, farming
this land is a way of life. "I worked every year of my life on this
farm with my dad," explains Myrtle. Stretched around her are the contoured
fields of Hetherington Mountain View Farm in Zion Grove, Pennsylvania. It
is the same panorama that greeted her parents each day, but many things
have changed.
From the smallest detail of choosing seed to the big picture of crop rotation,
Myrtle incorporates the themes of integrated pest management. She plants
as many resistant varieties as she can find, and is fussy about seedlings.
"When we buy cabbage plants," says Myrtle, "I insist that
the seed is hot water-treated against black rot and black leg diseases."
Last year she controlled bacterial speck of green peppers completely through
resistant seed.
"As I can remember, and it's not too many years ago," admits Myrtle,
"we sprayed to prevent diseases. It was an automatic thing-every seven
to ten days. But we don't do that anymore. "
Myrtle and her brother are constantly "watching for bugs," as
she says. If
they find Colorado potato beetles, they return to the field every day until
the beetles hatch; then they apply an environmentally friendly product.
Last year they sprayed only once for the beetles. Overall, they are spraying
about half the number of times they sprayed five years ago, and their pesticide
bills have decreased an average of 9 percent annually since 1993.
Disease-resistant seed and scouting are important on this farm, but in truth,
rotation is the backbone. The sites for growing vegetables are changed each
year so that no vegetable is grown more than once every four years in a
given spot. In the intervening years, oats, then timothy and alfalfa take
their turns on the site. Beyond rotation is careful site selection. For
example, to prevent outbreaks of the striped cucumber beetle, Myrtle never
plants cucumbers too close to the previous year's site. These sustainable
techniques eliminate many problematic pests.
Once the vegetables near maturity, Myrtle is busy making arrangements with
brokers. Cabbage finds its way into Giant and Safeway stores. Cucumbers
go to a packing house. And some of the tomatoes and sweet corn that flourished
in the rock mulch at Hetherington Mountain View Farm are transported to
New York City.
Myrtle has learned how to integrate pest management techniques through experience
and by listening to Extension personnel, such as Shelby Fleischer. "The
meetings that are really informative are the all-day Extension ones,"
she says. "It used to be that all winter long you could relax. Now
we go to zillions of meetings." Being a director of the Pennsylvania
Vegetable Growers Association means that Myrtle is involved in education,
research, marketing, and long-term vision.
Myrtle was recently invited to participate in team building with producers
from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey for the National IPM Initiative.
She is excited about the federal government taking the initiative to gather
farmers' ideas and concerns. "They need to get the word out to people
about IPM," says Myrtle. "If smaller farmers are not informed,
they'll become afraid of the idea. The truth is, a lot of farmers have a
pretty good start on IPM."
return to IPM in the Northeast Region 1996 Report, Table
of Contents