FRUITLAND, Iowa (AP)
Vince Lawson loves to show off the Muscatine Island Research and Demonstration Farm he directs.
So much that when about 60 visitors turned out recently to celebrate the farm’s 75-year partnership with Iowa State University, Lawson hopped on a tractor and took guests around about 40 acres on a hay ride.
That slow-going approach made it easier for folks to see what scientists at the farm have been up to.
From time to time, Lawson would hop off the tractor, grab a portable microphone, and talk about demonstration projects ranging from reducing pests like the Colorado potato beetle to growing plumper, tastier muskmelons.
“That’s why we’re here,” he told the farmers and other folks in the crowd. “We try things, and if it doesn’t work, we tell you about it so you don’t make the same mistake.”
Faculty members from Iowa State University were on hand to award Lawson and the rest of the staff a plaque and announce that an oak tree — a symbol of permanence — was being planted at the farm to provide shade for at least the next 75 years.
“I had no idea,” joked Jeff Iles, chair of the ISU Horticulture Department, “that Vince was that old.”
In fact, Lawson is 59.
The Muscatine Island facility — it got its name from the days when the Mississippi River used to flow at the farm, at 111 North Street in Fruitland — is the second-oldest research farm in Iowa. Only the Northern Research and Demonstration Farm in Kanawha, formed in 1930, is older.
Using test plots, curiousity and know-how, staff provides site-specific research on varieties, pesticides, mulch and other items that might be called “growing concerns.”
It’s owned by a nonprofit growers’ association and run by a board of directors.
“I’ve learned the best thing to do is to stay out of their way,” Lawson said. “When I need something done, it just gets done.”
Lawson became superintendent at the Muscatine farm in 1982. His predecessor, Lewis Peterson, served from 1946 until 1982. That means the two men have run the place for 64 of its 75 years.
Before he came to Muscatine Island, Lawson was an agronomist before earning a master’s degree in horticulture from Iowa State University. As well as managing the research farm, he provides extension work, too.
At one stop of the recent tractor tour, Lawson showed a sub-surface drip irrigation system that may prove beneficial for corn growers out West, where water is more precious than it is here.
But corn yields at the Muscatine Island test site — between 110 and 150 bushels per acre — have been disappointing. Water lines are now six inches higher than they were last year, closer to the root system, and Lawson thinks this year’s yields might be as high as the 200 bushels per acre he was hoping for.
Another plot has potato plants where Lawson and his crew are trying to control Colorado potato beetles, which Lawson says “have a voracious appetite.”
Lawson circulated a few of the hungry critters who’d been trapped in a bottle.
While one or two pesticides have been effective, Lawson wants to build up his arsenal so that the beetles don’t become immune to a single kind of treatment.
“We’re pretty excited about the results,” he said, “but we’ll have to wait until fall.”
Don Lewis, an ISU entomologist, said that while most pests come to crops, in this case, Iowa settlers “brought their crops to the pest,” which was already here in the 19th century.
Stopping first at a muskmelon trial and then a mulch trial, Lawson said that without mulch — in this case, a clear plastic laid on top of planted seeds — this spring’s 17 inches of rain would have completely washed away the fertilizer applied to help the plants in the trial grow.
Lawson’s testing a biodegradable mulch made from corn silk that its manufacturer says will disintegrate by fall, saving farmers the trouble of clearing it out after the harvest.
“The most disgusting part of all this is the fall,” Lawson said. “You’re left with plastic and weeds that you’ve got to pull up.”
After the Civil War, farmers realized the sandy soils on Muscatine Island would be ideal for growing a number of truck crops for marketing.
Local growers paid $1,000 to build a store and a post office, establishing the town of “Island” (later Fruitland, and, as one farmer would have named the community, “Melon”) in 1880.
By 1921 melon production from Muscatine County totaled 750 train car loads of watermelon and 100 carloads of muskmelon and cantaloupe.
In 1930, a growers association had agreed to supply the land, facilities and funds necessary to run a field station at Muscatine Island in exchange for the expertise from Iowa State College, as it was known then.
The problem of where to site the research station was solved Jan. 3, 1935, when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad agreed to lease a 61-acre tract adjoining Fruitland. The rental fee was $12 per year.
The railroad went bankrupt in 1980 and began to sell off its assets, including the land rented for the research farm. Two years later the growers’ association obtained title to the original tract of land and purchased 66 additional acres.
At Muscatine Island, new varieties and selected breeding lines of important vegetable crops are evaluated each year. The farm staff is also active in managing the research vineyard at the ISU Southeast Research Farm near Crawfordsville, where grape varieties are evaluated.
The use of irrigation on vegetable crops grown on sandy soils has expanded greatly since the farm’s founding in 1935. The expansion has been made possible by improvements in irrigation equipment.
Over its long history, Muscatine Island has conducted studies to determine the effects of rate and timing of water application and the application of fertilizers, hebicides and fungicides through the irrigation system.
