jeffgillman003

Big Trees for Crime Reduction

Like Linda, I believe that we don’t plant enough bare-root trees. Trees that are harvested and sold bare root tend to establish better and recover faster from transplant shock than trees sold in containers or as B&B (balled and burlapped) stock. But, in general, trees that are purchased in as bare-root stock are smaller than the other two styles, with B&B generally being the production method which yields the largest trees.

I disagree with Linda that, as a general rule, B&B stock should have its roots washed off prior to transplanting — I’ve done it and I’ve lost trees. Most of the B&B trees that I know of where root washing has been successful have been small, relatively easily transplanted stock. Once we have a few nice, big, long term studies that shows that B&B trees with their roots washed perform comparably to, or better than, normal B&B trees I’ll start to believe. (I will note that, as a rule, it looks like B&B stock is dug and cared for much better here in Minnesota than Washington!)

I’m not going to go into the nuances of the arguments here — we’ve done it before if you want to check the archives. But what I am going to point out is that a new study in Oregon has shown that bigger trees might help to deter crime. Yet another reason for the people of this country to demand larger stock.

Despite what all of the research shows (that it’s better to plant smaller trees — preferably bare-root) people want big trees — they want an instant landscape. They want it because to them it looks nice — and now its a way to protect your family too.

Historically this big stock comes B&B and is very expensive, cumbersome, and not the easiest things to successfully plant. We need a new, cheaper way to grow large stock. A number of researchers are working on different methods to produce large stock (special containers, bare root from a gravel bed) but nothing has worked out perfectly yet. It’s going to be interesting to see how all of this shakes out in the future — especially with the loss of ash trees in the Midwest.

What’s In A Name

Marketing is important if you want to sell something, but I have always been amazed at the different names that chemical companies have come up with for pesticides. Way back when, in the early 1900s and late 1800s insecticides were given soft, gentile names. Paris Green, London Purple, Bordeaux mix – really beautiful names that hint of worldly knowledge (for the most part they just indicate where the product was originally produced). In the mid-1900s names were more matter of fact: DDT, 2,4 D, 2,4,5 T — These names were indicative of the chemistry of the product being sold. Then professional marketers got a hold of pesticides and the fun started. If you’ve never farmed then you may never have seen some of these names, but to a farmer who uses commercial pesticides many of these names will sound familiar. My favorite name for a pesticide is Scythe. I don’t know why, it just strikes me as amusing that a chemical is being compared to a hand tool. Maybe Shovel, Rake, or Tweezers is next.

Here are a few names for various insecticides which include the same active ingredient, cypermethrin – a relatively dangerous insecticide — along with some of the emotions which you may feel while considering what insecticide to buy – in other words, feelings that marketers may use to drive you to select one product rather than another:

If you feel like attacking the insects: Ammo

If you’re feeling like the insects are closing in on you: Barricade

If you’re feeling like insects are closing in on you AND you’re a Civil War buff: Stockade

If you’re feeling like bailing out of the farming business altogether: Ripcord

If you want a pesticide that sounds safer than it is: Super

If you feel tough because you just watched the governor of California in an ‘80s sci fi flick: Cymperator

If you’re feeling mad as hell at those nasty insects: Demon

Okay – all of these products aren’t used for the same things, but dang….how many names can you have for one active ingredient?

Where the Money Comes From

After reading Linda’s excellent post yesterday I got to thinking about all of the discussions I have had over the years with people who didn’t know or understand where we (and by we, I mean my research group) got the money to do the work which we do. Oh, they thought they knew, but they were usually way, way off. So here I’m going to give you a terribly over-simplified version of the types of money that a professor can get to conduct the research that they want to conduct. This rundown will be different from professor to professor and institution to institution of course, but the basics will be about the same.

#1 An Endowment: This is gold – the best thing there is in terms of funding. An endowment is a large sum of money in an account which earns interest, and that interest can be used by the researcher in almost any way they want (as it relates to their research of course). Few professors have endowments for their research (though quite a number have some percentage of their salary covered by an endowment). As you might expect, endowments may yield anywhere from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand dollars depending on a number of factors. My position does not currently have an endowment associated with it.

#2 Hard funding from the University (actually state or federal funding, but it feeds through the University system): This type of funding is great. It isn’t as flexible as an endowment, but it is still usually quite flexible (as long as the money is used for a project which the professor was hired to do — an English professor couldn’t use hard funding to study how container growing affects daffodils). The word “Hard” implies that the funding is available at a more or less constant level year after year, but recently it has been volatile. If a University is suffering because of cutbacks, hard funding is in danger. When I came to Minnesota I had quite a bit of hard funding – basically enough for a full time technician. Now my hard funding covers a fraction of that.

#3 Gifts: Gifts are one time presents of money. Gifts are very flexible, and always greatly appreciated, but not recurring. I have received gifts from various people and organizations ranging from a few hundred dollars up to $15,000 (sounds like a lot, but if you’re using it to pay a salary it doesn’t last long).

#4 Government Grant: Government grants (I’m going to be liberal in my definition of Government grants – they can be anything from NSF and USDA grants to grants from cities or parks) are great, but they may only be used on research, teaching, or extension that the grant was given for. This money may or may not be recurring over many years. These grants can be prestigious and important (think NSF), but they’re also a tremendous amount of work and very competitive. I have written and been on these grants and they are currently how I fund most of my research on things such as elm selection and preferred boulevard trees (my grants are from local and city entities rather than NSF or USDA, but the idea is the same).

#5 Industry Grant: An industry grant is similar to a Government Grant except that it is given by an industry group, such as the Minnesota Turf and Grounds Foundation, or by a particular company, such as Bayer. Industry groups are a preferred source of income, but money from chemical companies, and other independent companies, does have a little bit of a stigma associated with it – it feels like you’re doing something to benefit one company instead of society as a whole. Chemical company money is not sneered at, but often you do have to conduct research that may not be at the top of your priority list (though if a professor doesn’t care about the research at all then usually they won’t do it). If I can make ends meet in terms of paying my employees by treating some buckthorn with triclopyr, then yes, I will do it. I have never taken a large sum from an independent firm, but I have certainly taken money and provided the research agreed upon. I would go so far as to say that most professors in the agricultural sciences have. For some it provides the bulk of their research dollars.

I’d like to conclude by saying that, in the case of dollars from chemical companies, I don’t personally know of any researcher who has purposefully falsified, failed to report, skewed, or selectively excluded data to make the chemical company happier with the results. Doing so would ultimately just make that researcher (and the chemical company) look like an idiot. I have personally given data to chemical companies which shows that their stuff doesn’t work that well – they don’t like it, but they appreciate it – marketing something that doesn’t work isn’t good for anyone. I do know of a case where a researcher proposed a study to a large chemical company which would examine unseen dangers of a particular pesticide and was turned down – this was disappointing to me. I think that many companies feel that they have a duty to seek out obvious dangers and that the government has a responsibility to fund research investigating unseen or unlikely dangers – but that’s just my own opinion.

Happy Days

Today is such a good day. Really good. Almost as good as my wedding day and the birth of my kids good. Better than the Eagles won the Superbowl good (I’m a big Philadelphia Eagles football fan — Mike Vick and his transgressions aside of course).

Just for today I don’t care much about the arguments for or against organics, natives or even my favorite topic, pesticides.

What’s the news you ask?

Peanuts. Hot Boiled Peanut.

If you follow this blog you may recall that Tom Michaels, a professor and bean breeder here at UMN, and I planted a few rows of peanuts last year in between rows of trees — the trees you see below are elms from a selection program we’re running here. Between the rows you’ll notice some plants starting to turn yellow, those are peanuts. The darker green plants between the rows of trees are canola.

Below is what a peanut plant looks like when you harvest it. After the flowers are pollinated the plant sends the stalk on which the flower is growing into the soil where it forms a peanut. When we harvested we saw anywhere from 0 to about 10 peanuts per plant.

We harvested a test batch of peanuts last night — probably a little over a pound. They were a little immature, but they still tasted good fresh out of the ground. Without any treatment fresh peanuts taste a lot like fresh peas — an unmistakable “legume” flavor. For those of you love roasted peanuts, that familiar flavor is a result of the roasting process.

Boiled peanuts are a little different than roasted peanuts in that the pods are usually harvested a little bit immature, so our first harvest, yesterday, was actually right on time. We’re planning on finishing harvest next week.

Anyway, once we got the peanuts out of the ground I drove them straight home, put them into a quart of water, added a quarter cup of salt, and put that mixture into a crock-pot on high heat for three hours and low heat for another eleven. I tasted one after three and knew they would be good. After the full 14 hours? The best boiled peanuts I’ve ever had.

As my wife noted, these peanuts aren’t exactly the same as the one’s you get in
the South. She was trying to be nice — but I got the impression that
they were just a little too different from what she’s used to for her to like them quite as much as
the ones we get when we visit South Carolina (which we visit yearly). The difference between these peanuts and the other boiled peanuts that I’ve had (and I’ve had a lot — from all over the South) is that these are a little bit sweeter.

For me — Best damn peanuts ever — Minnesota grown no less. Who woulda’ thought? Not me. Can’t wait to boil a big batch next week!</d

The New Evidence Against Glyphosate

This past week Susan over at Garden Rant asked me about a paper which she had recently read which “proved” that Round-up caused birth defects. This study was interesting because it took embryos of chickens, exposed them to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Round-up) and then looked at the problems which the embryos had. Indeed, there were problems at concentrations of glyphosate much lower than what you’d see in normal agricultural applications. This is similar to other studies which “prove” how toxic glyphosate is which have been conducted over the years where various types of cells have been removed from human bodies, exposed to glyphosate, and then the resulting cellular damage has been taken as an indication that this herbicide is incredibly dangerous to us.

Studies where embryos or cells removed from the human body are tested against poisons have a glaring weakness which needs to be appreciated before we go off the deep end thinking that they prove that glyphosate is killing us. They’re conducted in a system that isn’t at all natural. That’s not to say they have no importance, but it’s like saying that, because it’s known that an air bubble in your bloodstream will kill you, air is dangerous. Or like saying that, because salt injected into your bloodstream is deadly, you shouldn’t eat it. Both air and salt can be deadly if they are in your bloodstream above a certain level, but we need to be careful to look at the specific situation with which we are dealing and take that into account when we make our judgments about how toxic particular things are to us.

I can’t argue that glyphosate can be toxic to people. This morning I did a little literature search on it and actually found cases where people had committed suicide by drinking agricultural formulation of glyphosate – mostly in the Eastern world. It would be a nasty way to go too – you’d need to ingest a lot of the stuff and the primary problems would be that parts of your gastrointestinal system would be corroded. Ouch!

If you’re going to use a glyphosate herbicide use it carefully and in accordance with its label. Don’t go splashing it around willy-nilly. Don’t drink it. Don’t get it on anyone. Don’t use more than you need to. To do any of these things is not only dangerous, it’s also stupid. That said, I can’t find any reason to think that glyphosate is anything but what it appears to be – an effective weed killer that is on the safer end of the spectrum relative to other chemical weed killers (and here I’m including organic weed killers too – Ever been exposed to those 20% acetic acid vinegar herbicides? I tried one this summer — Just being near it made my eyes burn.)

How to Kill Buckthorn

Last year we completed a small research study on how to kill buckthorn. If you live in the upper Midwest then you’re familiar with this plant as a shrub which has escaped cultivation, been spread by birds, and generally made a nuisance of itself, particularly at the edges of forested land.

Buckthorn is notoriously difficult to kill after it gets more than about a foot high. It laughs at single applications of roundup. If it’s pulled out of the ground any roots that don’t come with it have a good chance of sprouting shoots themselves, and it seems to enjoy being treated with organic herbicides like vinegar. So, to try and kill bucktorn, we used an herbicide which had the active ingredient triclopyr. This is an active ingredient which is usually great against all manner of weedy vines like poison ivy. This herbicide is labeled for homeowner use and is available in most garden centers.

We applied this herbicide to buckthorn in the spring, summer and fall, and we used a few different application methods including painting the herbicide onto cut stumps and spraying it onto the leaves of uncut bushes, as well as painting the product onto the lower portion of stems. Some of these application methods were experimental. Do not attempt to apply an herbicide in any way besides that which is listed on the label!

That said, we found that the fall was by far the best time to apply the herbicide and that spraying the foliage wasn’t nearly as effective as other application methods, particularly painting the cut stem with the product after cutting it down.

Are Fertilizer and Insecticide Spikes a Good Idea?

One of the products that I often hear gardeners raving about are their fertilizer / pesticide combination spikes which are supposed to not only feed your plants, but also kill all of the insects which attack them. I, personally, have not used these products, but I’m generally the kind of person who says “If it works for you then keep using it”. Still, these spikes bug me a little. Here’s why.

First of all I should point out that I’m not opposed to fertilizer spikes by themselves. I’m a little concerned that fertilizer should be spread out instead of concentrated in one place, but still, I don’t consider them that bad. The insecticides used for these spikes is where I have the problem. Once upon a time these spikes were made with a chemical called disulfoton (aka disyston) which is bad news. It’s a water soluble chemical which is highly toxic to people. If you have an old package of fertilizer / insecticide spikes around there’s a good chance they were made with this chemical. Do yourself a favor and get rid of them. This stuff is really toxic and not to be messed with. On the other hand, if you’ve purchased fertilizer / insecticide spikes recently, then the active insecticide in those spikes is probably imidacloprid. Imidacloprid is a mixed bag when it comes to safety. It’s not nealy as toxic as disulfoton, but it’s not non-toxic. It has been banned in Europe for a variety of reasons, the most important of which seems to be that it was implicated in the collapse of bee hives (imidacloprid is systemic insecticide so it will get into a plants pollen where honey bees could eat it). At this point it hasn’t been ruled out as having something to do with hive collapse here in the states — though if it does have a role it does not seem to act alone. It can also affect other beneficial insects who feed on pollen. Additionally, it has been known to control some pests while allowing mites to go crazy — in fact, it may even increase the rate of mite egg laying.

But imidacloprid is an effective insecticide which works against a wide range of insects which you that you might find on your plants. It is much safer than many of the older systemic insecticides, and it isn’t readily translocated to fruits (a problem that many people are concerned about with systemic insecticides is the movement of these insecticides into the fruit itself where it can’t be washed off — Imidacloprid is translocated to fruits –just not that much — it moves in the xylem and fruit takes up mostly phloem).

So these spikes are one of those things that I’m wary of. Not to say you shouldn’t use them, but be aware of what they are and what they could do before you buy them.

My Long Suffering Basil

Sometimes I am not such a good garden professor. That’s because, when I get home, I sometimes (OK — often) don’t give my plants the attention they need. It’s also because, when we leave for vacation, I often forget to tell whoever is watching the animals to keep their eyes on the plants too. Now, really, you would think that someone who saw a plant on the back porch in full wilt would think “Hey, Maybe I should water that!” But still, I blame myself for not spelling it out.

What this all leads to, of course, is that we had a group of really nice basil plants in a container on the back porch which weren’t watered for a week while we were on vacation. There was little rain over this week, and subsequently the basil was in full wilt for at least 2 days (perhaps as long as three). We watered these plants soon after we arrived home (my wife loves caprese salad) and the plants perked up a bit, but the leaves were obviously damaged and now our salads will be a little less flat.

It’s not just basil that is affected by an incidence of drought. Most plants, including trees, will actually suffer for a considerable period of time after the event. Sometimes growth won’t return to normal for as much as a year or two. This is a really bad situation if you’re buying trees grown in containers. If the grower, or retailer, didn’t know what they were doing and let the tree wilt severely prior to selling it to you then buyer beware!

Why I like science (our visiting professor returns)

I like science. I see it as a way to figure things out. It creates a combination of a) things we’re pretty sure of (facts about the shape of DNA, the optimum pH for certain plant species, and theories consistent with such facts, for example) and importantly, b) questions we can ask next. When research is designed to answer those new questions, the results will either support the things we’re pretty sure of and lead to an expanded understanding and new questions, or they won’t support what we thought we knew and the results will lead to a different understanding and new questions.

Scientists do research, but it’s only useful if others find out about it. Imagine what more Darwin might have come up with had he known about Mendel’s work on inheritance of traits. And when a researcher shares his or her research results at a meeting or in a publication (like many colleagues got to do in Portugal last week, lucky dogs), they are opening their research up to critique from others. Thoughtful critique is exciting. It may feel like an attack on the researcher, but it is usually an attack on the borders of what is known.

Stay with me, this relates to professors AND gardens.

One of my favorite papers full of criticism is about ‘Talking Trees’. This idea emerged in the early 1980’s (and given a catchy name) when research was suggesting that trees with damaged (manually torn) leaves could cause chemical responses in nearby plants. It was concluded that maybe, just maybe, one tree was acting as a beacon, sending out signals when damaged by a herbivore. Then a tree fortunate enough to receive the signal could begin to mount a defense against herbivores before being damaged itself. A paper published in 1983 (Baldwin and Schultz, Science, 221:277–279) showed evidence for this kind of communication. But then an article published in 1985 [Fowler and Lawton, American Naturalist, 126(2):181–195] called into doubt the conclusions of the 1983 paper. As the authors of the 1985 paper lay out, the statistical design and analysis of the 1983 paper was flawed. We shouldn’t trust the conclusions without more research. And one thing I really like about the new research detailed in the 1985 Fowler and Lawton paper, they clearly lay out potential shortcomings of their own work, and even consulted about these pitfalls with an author of the 1983 paper (which they thoroughly criticized!). This is where the “what questions to ask next” are generated, and the authors did some of the heaviest lifting for us there. Such discussion and disclosure helps to expand knowledge in the field, but I like it in this particular instance because it also gives a sort of narrative about thoughtful criticism in science.

So this does relate to gardening, because there is a lot more going on out there than just ‘growing’. There has been a lot of research since 1983 on inter-plant signals, and it does seem to happen in the lab, but also at close distances in nature with some plants (the sagebrush-tobacco relationship is best-studied). The research has also shown this signaling can reduce herbivore damage on undamaged plants. For brief reviews, see Dicke et al. [Trends in Plant Science, 2003, 8(9):403-405] or Baldwin et al. (Science, 2006, 311:812–815). And as an added bonus, the chemicals released by herbivore-damaged plants can attract carnivores that EAT herbivores (predatory mites and parasitoid wasps, for instance). Some of the chemicals that may be involved in these responses? Methyl jasmonate (smells like jasmine) and methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil). Your garden is doing a whole lot more than you realize just under your nose, and I haven’t even MENTIONED all the plant and invertebrate sex, or the kinky inter-kingdom pseudocopulation that might be going on out there. Plants and science are awesome.

Dog Spots

There is a general misunderstanding among the gardening (and yard owning) community about dog spots. It seems that some people believe that dog spots occur because of a high or low pH or because of some sort of poison in a dog’s urine, but that really isn’t the case at all. Dog spots occur because of something that I pointed out a few weeks ago in another post. Urine contains a lot of nitrogen. When a dog pees on your lawn that extra nitrogen isn’t used and so ends up being poisonous to the grass which is peed upon. You’ll notice that around the periphery of a dog spot the grass is particularly bright green. This is because the extra nitrogen helps the grass in that location rather than poisoning it. If you want to get rid of a dog spot the best thing to do is to follow your dog around carrying a five gallon bucket of water and pour it over the spot as soon as the dog pees — this should stop the grass from dying, but will probably not get rid of all the extra nitrogen and so you’ll end up with a bright green spot instead of a brown one.