Quail Hill Farm: Field Report Week 5
June 25, 2026
By Jane Weissman
Tales from the Field: A conversation with Madi
On Tuesday, Sandy Menasha, a potato and vegetable specialist from Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE), visited Quail Hill. CCE's mission is to provide trusted and practical advice to farmers — and to backyard gardeners, too. Madi regularly consults Sandy, finding her "a helpful, grounding voice when things are going awry, i.e., when crops are benighted by pests or disease. She’s knowledgeable and practical, her advice based on available labor and the cost benefit of potential remedies such as spraying, pruning, or trellising."
Eastern Long Island is naturally humid. "The above strategies can help, but sometimes there’s no real way to successfully conquer disease and pests; they only slow down their advance. The most effective strategy starts with crop selection, to choose crops that are more resistant, adaptable and stronger." These are not GMO’s (genetically modified organisms), but they are bred for certain resistant qualities, to maintain their good taste and, in some cases, developing characteristics that mimic heirloom varieties. Heirlooms are, by definition, plants that are allowed to open-pollinate (in contrast to being cross-pollinated, as is the case with hybrid plants), and they usually are passed down from generation to generation. As such they are a reservoir of genetic diversity. “Our challenge is to find the balance between choosing plants known for disease resistance and heirlooms that are generally more interesting in terms of looks and taste."
All the apprentices joined Madi and Sandy on their walk through the fields, looking at the crops that traditionally are besieged by disease and pests: fava beans, peas, cucumbers, and potatoes.
Fava beans have a notoriously short season, and, by its end, the pods get attacked by a black aphid that’s specific to favas. Sandy mentioned an organic spray that might work on this type of aphid, but it would need to be applied earlier in the season. Next year!
Many farm members have remarked on the yellowing pea plants (not the yellow peapods, which are delicious). Sandy identified it as Fusarium Wilt, a fungus that rots the roots of certain legumes. Some fusarium species like warm and dry soils, others like cold and wet soils. Bottom line, many farmers have experienced pea issues this season.
The worrisome news is this fungus can live in the soil for up to 10 years, which is a good argument for rotating crops from one field to another. And it makes sense to select resistant varieties of peas. The sugar snaps peas now ready for harvest are such a variety. “They have none of the yellowing. So that's just an interesting experiment right there.”
In an earlier e-news, we reported the loss of the cucumbers, hit by a cold spell just after the seedlings got transplanted. Luckily plants from Town Lane South could be moved to Birch Hill. Now, however, cucumber beetles are crawling around the plants. The good news is that they should be okay; Sandy told us that they’ve now grown beyond the stage when the beetles do the most harm. But she suggested trellising the plants to lift them off the ground, which will keep them dry and encourage airflow.
It’s the Colorado potato beetle that causes the most concern, and not finding them on the leaves of potatoes when expected precipitated weekly calls to Sandy. The beetles arrived a couple weeks later than usual, at which point Madi began looking out for their eggs. Only when the eggs began to hatch could she apply Entrust, an ecologically sound spray used by organic farmers. A week later, she applied the recommended second and final application. Any more spraying and the beetle develops a resistance to it.
Sandy was impressed with the potato plants, saying “it’s a really good organic crop.” Still, some potato beetle larvae remain on the leaves. “It’s hard to believe considering the cost benefit ratio, but Sandy in her very practical way suggested that the best way to reduce the larva population is to go through the plants and kill them by hand. And that’s just what we’re going to do.”