Farmers know that producing and marketing high-quality crops requires careful attention to detail, from planting through storage. Now available from SARE, the Northeast Crop Production Manual and Northeast Harvest Manual are user-friendly guides offering step-by-step information on growing, harvesting and handling dozens of specialty crops, from arugula to watermelons. Developed by farmers themselves, these guides are ideal reference materials for beginning farmers, apprentices and crews based on years of on-the-ground experience.
The Northeast Crop Production Manual covers soil preparation, planting and transplanting, pest management, and more. The Northeast Harvest Manual addresses harvest timing, best practices for picking, and post-harvest handling and storage guidelines.
These guides were originally written by New York farmer Jean-Paul Courtens to provide instructions to his own crews and apprentices on how to grow and handle crops on his farm. Seeing the popularity of the manuals with his peers, he used a Northeast SARE grant in 2020 to refine and broaden the information in them by incorporating insights from 60 other growers in the Northeast and Midwest, plus vegetable specialists from Cornell Cooperative Extension. (Learn more about the history of the guides in the letter from the author.)
To increase access to these valuable farmer-to-farmer resources, SARE is now pleased to make them available in both online and PDF formats on our website. Download or browse both the Northeast Crop Production Manual and Northeast Harvest Manual at https://www.sare.org/resources/northeast-crop-production-harvest-manual/.