This video, created by NOFA-NY with cooperation from the CCE Cornell Vegetable Program, discusses the stresses put on high tunnel soil nutrient levels since the area is cropped intensively, year after year. Certain nutrients get out of balance. There is no rainfall to buffer the effects of our fertilizers and irrigation water and, over time, certain things go on in the soil which make the nutrients less available to the plant. Those nutrient imbalances either decrease the quality of our yield or the total yield overall.

So what we're trying to do is fine tune our approach to fertilizer or amendment application to the high tunnel soil. In order to improve our management it requires more information: what are the nutrient levels of our amendments -- our compost, our fertilizers; what is the pH and the alkalinity of our irrigation water; and what's going on inside the plant. To get that information, we run a lot of lab tests on both the soil as well as the plant. Once we have that information then we can begin to make informed decisions and that's what this project is about.

NOFA-NY and Cornell Cooperative Extension are working together to help farmers adopt information-based decision making in their high tunnels.