Organic vegetable farms on the Central Coast region of California are generally intensive operations. That is, two and sometimes three crops may be harvested off the same acreage each year. Many approaches exist for growing and marketing organic vegetables. This publication describes the range of soil management practices, pest management, crop rotations, cover crops, and harvest and packing methods currently used by organic growers on the Central Coast of California. Marketing options and state and federal regulations governing organic commodities are also discussed. A general sequence of operations, equipment requirements, resource use, costs, yield and return ranges are presented for thirteen vegetable crops and two cover crops. The vegetables included are cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, garlic, lettuce (leaf and romaine), onions (red and yellow), snap peas, snow peas, bell peppers (green and red), sweet corn, and winter squash (large and small varieties). Barley and vetch are the two cover crops detailed.

Central Coast growers are under increasing scrutiny and regulatory pressure to manage herbicide use because of their farmland’s proximity to the Monterey Bay and National Marine Sanctuary. Vineyard floor management practices typically consist of a combination of weed control strategies, including herbicide use and cover crops. We evaluated nine combinations of vineyard floor management practices for their impacts on fruit yield, quality and costs. We found that compared to the grower standard, post-emergence herbicide treatments generally used smaller amounts of chemicals and were less costly, with similar yields and quality.

Widespread contamination of surface water with nitrate-nitrogen (NO₃-N) has led to increasing regulatory pressure to minimize NO₃-N release from agricultural operations. We evaluated the use of wood chip denitrification bioreactors to remove NO₃-N from tile drain effluent on two vegetable farms in Monterey County. Across several years of operation, denitrification in the bioreactors reduced NO₃-N concentration by an average of 8 to 10 milligrams per liter (mg L^-1) per day during the summer and approximately 5 mg L^-1 per day in winter. However, due to the high NO₃-N concentration in the tile drainage (60 to 190 mg L^-1), water discharged from the bioreactors still contained NO₃-N far above the regulatory target of < 10 mg L^-1. Carbon enrichment (applying soluble carbon to stimulate denitrifying bacteria) using methanol as the carbon source substantially increased denitrification, both in laboratory experiments and in the on-farm bioreactors. Using a carbon enrichment system in which methanol was proportionally injected based on tile drainage NO₃-N concentration allowed nearly complete NO₃-N removal with minimal adverse environmental effects.