Getting Started with Berry Production
If you’re exploring the idea of adding berries and bramble fruits to your farm, this course will help you consider all the aspects of this decision, from varieties and site selection all the way through profit potential and marketing.
Target Audience
Beginners - This course will be especially useful if you are exploring the possibilities of growing berries for income. The material presented will assume little past knowledge of farming, but a background in gardening or farming will be very helpful.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this course, you will know:
- Primary considerations when choosing a site for successful berry farming
- Basic cultural demands of the 3 major berry crops (strawberry, blueberry and brambles)
- Cultural requirements of an array of lesser known berry crops
- Pest complexes of the major berry crops
- Post-harvest requirements of berries
- Considerations for successful marketing of berry crops
- How to analyze costs and income and be able to incorporate them into a business plan
Webinars
The bulk of the course happens on your own time with discussions, readings and review quizzes (not graded!) posted in Teachable, our virtual classroom. To add to the experience, live webinars will be woven into the online interface of the course to allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from outside presenters and ask questions to address your farm issues in real time. If you miss a webinar, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.
Webinar Schedule
Live instruction for the 2021-2022 season will begin on Tues. Nov 2, 2021 from 7-8:30pm Eastern time, and continue for 6 weeks, with the final webinar on Tues. Dec 7.
While we encourage live attendance so you have the opportunity to
engage with the presenters and ask questions, all webinars we will be
posted in our online classroom for students to watch anytime. Once you have enrolled in this course, you will retain access to all
materials indefinitely, and can return to participate in the live
webinars as many times as you wish.
Your Instructor
Amy Ivy recently retired from the Eastern NY Commercial Horticulture Program. She worked with gardeners and growers for Cornell Cooperative Extension for 31 years in the northeastern corner of NYS, on the east side of the Adirondack Mountains. Her particular interests are season extension, protected culture including high tunnels, soil health and insects both good and bad.
Jim O’Connell is a Resource Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension
in Ulster County, NY, with responsibilities in berries and grapes. His
interest in agriculture started at the Univ. of NH, where he worked as a
research assistant in both vegetable and fruit crops. From there
Jim’s love and knowledge of agriculture grew, eventually taking
him to Massachusetts where he worked as a research technician with
cranberries for nine years. Jim made the move to New York and started
working for Cornell Cooperative Extension in June 2012.