The Mother trial

This is a replicated field trial located at the UCSC Farm designed to compare different 2 versus 4 year crop rotations and a range of fertility and soil-borne disease suppression strategies. Rotations are either based around broccoli (thought to suppress Verticillium wilt) as the rotation crop before strawberries, or lettuce (a Verticillium host) - see table above. Within each rotation we compare use of a legume/cereal winter cover crop alone, cover crop plus compost and supplemental feathermeal as needed (based on PSNT soil tests), a winter rye cover crop plus mustard seed meal, and a no input bare winter fallow control between the cash crops.  Disease management is either achieved by use of anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) or the addition of mustard seed meal alone or in combination with the inclusion of broccoli in the rotation.