 Sweet corn is an important vegetable crop in the Northeast. Freshly picked, locally grown sweet corn is popular among consumers who like to be able to buy it at roadside stands, farmers markets, and supermarkets. To grow a marketable crop of sweet corn, farmers must provide adequate soil fertility, control insect pests, and manage weeds. In this video, farmers describe production practices that they use to grow a good crop of corn without excessive use of fertilizers, insecticides, or herbicides. These ecological production practices can help enhance profits while protecting natural resources. Farmers can decide for themselves which of these practices makes sense for their operation. I'm Alex MacLennan and I farm in the Connecticut River Valley in Windsor, Vermont on sandy silt loam soils. I grow about 50 acres of vegetables. That's about 20 acres in sweet corn, 20 acres in pumpkins, and about 10 acres of green beans. I started using hairy vetch oh I'd say about four or five years ago now. Basically I was looking for something, I don't have animals, I don't have manure, so I've been trying to find cover crops that fit in well with a fairly intensive vegetable production so that we don't wear out the soil. I like the vetch for a source of nitrogen because I'm looking for something with a bit of a time release to it as opposed to just throwing on your rea and having it go into solution too quickly. I also use the vetch specifically because I don't take land out of production for an entire growing season so I'm trying to have a cover crop on the land basically all the time that there's not a cash crop on there. I seed vetch from 15 to 30 pounds to the acre. A 30 pound rate gives a real nice stand but some years the vetch seed is very expensive and sometimes I just economize by cutting back to a rate as low as 15 pounds. I still get a reasonably good stand with 15 pounds to the acre. That is seeded at the same time as the oats which is usually at about a bushel to the acre and that seems to work out well for giving me a fall cover. We inoculate the vetch seed to make sure that we get good nodulation because the whole purpose really of the hairy vetch cover crop is to get nitrogen fixation. We turn the vetch under in preparation for planting usually around the second to third week of May. I like to hold off as long as I possibly can and get as much nitrogen out of the vetch as I can before I plow it under. Hairy vetch has never been a problem in volunteer production or weed production. We never had any problem turning it under and killing it very easily without any chemical use. So the vetch gives me additional biomass, a little bit better soil structure, additional nitrogen and erosion protection for the winter and early spring. The major drawback to using vetch has been the cost of the seed but as long as it stays under $2 a pound I intend to continue to use it and I think it's done a great job on my soils.