Marty Travis at Spence Farm grows vegetables, grains and alfalfa for Chicago restaurants. After two years working with AEA consultants, his peppers grew to their largest ever, untreated rows produced half-sized fruit, and he cut disease and pest losses on brassicas and squash.
Questions this video answers
Marty Travis, a partner at Spence Farm.
Vegetables, small grains, and some alfalfa.
Restaurants and chefs in Chicago and downstate Illinois.
About two years ('the last two years').
Early-season flea beetles on kales/brassicas and squash bugs.
Chapters
I'm Marty Travis. I'm one of the partners here at Spence Farm. We grow all manner of vegetables, produce small grains and some alfalfa for a local dairy. Almost all of our product is sold to restaurants, chefs in Chicago and downstate Illinois. Some of our issues that we would have as we first began our farm adventure here was having consistent quality and figuring how to deal with bug issues, disease issues. Since working with Gary, we've learned just how connected things are to each other and how to understand a plant's total health and to be able to probably utilize all the tools in our toolbox. And we've come to just a much greater understanding about growing plants. Our experience since we've began working the last two years fairly closely using AEA products, we've noticed our plant health is much improved, the quality of our product is better. Many of our disease issues have gone away. Some of the bug issues that we've had in the past, specifically early season like kales and some of the brassicas, we've been able to eliminate, some of the flea beetles, we're able now to deal with squash bugs and those kinds of things. One of the great things that we've been able to do, growing as much variety as we do here on the farm, we've been able to do some side by side trials using AEA product and not using AEA product. The difference is remarkable. Yield, plant health, the size of plants, the quality of produce coming off of that is much, much improved. Last season we had the largest peppers we've ever grown. We left one row totally untreated and they were half the size. Our experience using AEA product is not just about the product, it's about the information and the learning curve that happens between us and actually the consultants when we present an issue. It's fun in my mind to have a consultant say, hmm, I'm not sure, but let's figure it out. That's the kind of relationship we have here with the consultants from aea. And that's the kind of thing that we want to grow in our understanding about what we're doing and to have that opportunity, it's priceless. J.
