About Stone Gardens Farm

About Us

Stone Gardens Farm was started in 1998 by Fred and Stacia Monahan. Over the years our business has grown tremendously and is known for its sweet corn. We grow vegetables, flowers and fruit on our private and rented land throughout Shelton. We also have several resident greenhouses utilized to support the farm.

Stone Gardens Farm stand was originally situated at Shelton's Dairy on Birdseye Road. In 2004 it was relocated, one mile away, to 83 Sawmill City Road. At this location you can buy fresh produce and many other tasty treats.

Our family works and lives in these fields, planting and harvesting. We are not an organic farm but our growing practices are IPM, (integrated pest management) which means we only spray when necessary and try to use organic spray.

We want our food and environment as safe or safer than you. Knowing where your food comes from is becoming a very important concern in today's "factory produced" society. Feel free to contact us for a tour of our farm if you want to really see where and how your food is grown.

We are not an organic farm. We use a growing method called vegetable IPM (which stands for integrated pest management). We use pesticides only when necessary, we determine this by extensive scouting of the crops for pest and disease pressure. We also look at the weather patterns of the current season and at what point in its life cycle the affected plant is (sometimes it can be harvested before too much damage is done by the pest) . If it is determined that there is no other way to save the crop we will use the most environmentally friendly pesticide/fungicide we can. To also minimize the use of any type of pesticide/ fungicide we rotate crops yearly, add compost and manure to the fields every fall, plant cover crops to be tilled into the soil, and try to plant resistant (but not GMO) varieties of vegetables. Our goal is to grow healthy plants without harming any beneficial insects, the soil, or ourselves. We raise our family in our fields and want you to feel comfortable doing the same.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a sustainable approach to managing pests. IPM practitioners base decisions on information that is collected systematically as they integrate economic, environmental, and social goals. IPM applies to any situation, agricultural or urban, and is flexible enough to accommodate the changing demands of agriculture, commerce, and society.

The biology and life-cycle of a pest often reveals the key to successful control measures. Detailed, pest-specific information is available in fact sheets in this and other IPM web sites (see links) or in crop-specific publications and manuals. See: Vegetable IPM Educational Opportunities at UConn
Scouting involves using systematic methods of inspecting the crop on a regular basis to quantify pest populations or crop injury/damage. Scouting techniques vary considerably depending upon the type of pests (weed, insect, disease or other) involved. Details are available in pest and crop-specific IPM fact sheets and manuals.
Monitoring weather conditions or trapping pests can be used to assess or predict current or future pest problems and help to prevent crop damage. Equipment and procedures vary by pest (for details see references mentioned above).
Action thresholds are usually expressed as a fixed number for individual pests (i.e. 7 moths or 2 weeds/foot of row) or crop injury (i.e. 20% defoliation), or as a rating for weather conditions (15 Disease Severity Units). Thresholds tell you when to control the pest(s) to prevent or minimize economic damage to crops. Some thresholds are given for pests in the individual crop sections of the New England Vegetable Management Guide and others vary by state or region and are available in local or regional Extension publications. Contact your state's Extension IPM personnel for relevant local action thresholds.
Proper record-keeping involves recording data on weather, pest populations, crop conditions and control procedures all season. Good records help determine which pest control strategies are working and where improvements should be made in the future.

Feel free to contact us with your questions at:
stonegds@comcast.net

Thanks very much, we hope to see you at the farm!
Fred & Stacia