According to the FAO (and their “year of the potato” campaign from 2008), 2008 was the year of the potato. Did you all notice? I may not have, except for the year-long display in the horticulture building at the University of Minnesota. What I recently became curious about was how much garden space it would take for a person to grow enough potatoes to satisfy their annual average consumption. But if you make it past that math in this blog entry, you’ll read about recent congressional action on the tasty tuber. … Continue reading this article “Our visiting professor weighs in on potatoes”
Month: November 2011
Podcast Season 2 is here!
My abject apologies for being late in posting this week. I’ve been in Angel’s Camp, California since Tuesday – a lovely, wonderful place – but without anything above 2G wifi. Needless to say, posting on the blog was impossible. So I’m in the Sacramento airport, enjoying a glass of wine and a crab Louis before I leave for Seattle, and finally able to access a 4G connection!
In any case, here’s the beginning of Season 2’s podcasts. … Continue reading this article “Podcast Season 2 is here!”
Looking for answers
“Stealing an idea from one source is plagiarism; stealing from many sources is research.” This quote has been attributed to so many people I won’t bother trying to list them here. But the point is a lot of what we do as professors is spend our time digging into the literature to look for substantiating or conflicting evidence for the ideas were interested in testing. As a grad student back in the 1980’s, a time-honored tradition was to spend the afternoon at the library combing the stacks for journal articles, loading volume after volume onto a cart and then schlepping off the library copy center.… Continue reading this article “Looking for answers”
Leaves for Lawn Fertilizer
Yesterday I happened to see a garden calendar encouraging people to pick up their leaves so that they don’t pollute streams and lakes by encouraging algae to grow. This was a good idea, I thought, but then I started to wonder whether leaves on the lawn might not be a better idea? After all, the reason that leaves cause algal growth in water is because of the nutrients they have. And if they have nutrients couldn’t those be used for fertilizer instead of the regular fertilizers which we use? … Continue reading this article “Leaves for Lawn Fertilizer”
Weird Plant Wednesday!
Inspired by Linda’s Euphorbia quiz last week – here’s another:
Euphorbia tirucalli ‘Firesticks’ in the Hahn Horticulture Garden at Virginia Tech (right before we dug it up due to impending frost). Am hoping for a "comment of approval" from Hap (Mister Cactus Jungle) on this nice specimen…not bad for Zone 6a!
Same funky little leaflets/antennae… just like Linda’s Euphorbia lactea ‘Cristata’
GP factoid: also known as "milkbush," the latex sap contains terpenoids – it apparently has potential as an energy source or "hydrocarbon plant."… Continue reading this article “Weird Plant Wednesday!”
Phosphate toxicity and iron deficiency
Bert’s post yesterday reminded me of some work one of my graduate students did about 10 years ago. We were curious to see whether a transplant fertilizer containing phosphate was correlated with foliar iron deficiency, which is visualized as interveinal chlorosis:
What Scott did was to plant 10 rhododendrons per treatment into pots containing containing a name brand azalea, camellia and rhododendron food (5-5-3) at 0, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 times the recommended amount. Here are some of the results of that study:
Total number of chlorotic plants
Total foliar iron vs.… Continue reading this article “Phosphate toxicity and iron deficiency”