this past week I went to the practical farmers of iowa cooperator meeting where I had a lot of fun hearing about farmers fun practical on farm research this past year and we brainstormed and starting designing potential research projects for next year. if you want to read the full reports of two of our projects from last year - check out their website:
for the pepper report, go to:
http://practicalfarmers.org/farmer-knowledge/research-reports/2015/bell-...

here are before and after weeding pictures of our pepper plot. this was a variety trial between Olympus and revolution pepper. the summary of the report was that revolution won overall and on 3 of the 5 farms, though on our farm there was no significant difference in yield.

and for our squash project look at:
http://practicalfarmers.org/farmer-knowledge/research-reports/2015/summe...

these are pictures of squash with a mosaic virus. this was not what our research was about, just something we learned in the meantime.
we were comparing a till and no-till planting. the results showed a significant better yield in the till sections, and our observations showed better health overall in the tilled sections. this was not our hoped for result. however, there's a lot going on, like potentially cooler soil in the no-till and nutrients being tied up in breaking down the carbons of the rye for the first few weeks of the plants' lives.