Category: Uncategorized

Beer and 1984

1984.  That’s the year that the last professor here at the University of Minnesota published a paper about peanuts.  He had tested a number of different varieties, some of which we’re testing now, and found that they do quite well in Minnesota.  Then for the next 26 years there was a lull.  And now?  We have peanuts!  Boiled peanuts and man are they good.  But…will we end up in 1984 again?  How do we make sure that our peanuts don’t disappear into academic oblivion?  We’ve got to find a restaurant, a bar, a gas station, something, who wants to try something new – we need demand.  Maybe the state fair?  We’ll see.

I give a lot of talks throughout the US.  It’s something that I enjoy, but, honestly, a year or two after I give a talk in a location I usually forget many of the specifics – they bleed together.  Sure, I remember that I gave a talk in Green Bay (for example) – and I remember the people and the botanical garden (both of which were great) – but I don’t really remember the talk itself.  Well, this past Tuesday night I gave a talk that I’ll remember forever.  There’s a bar in Minneapolis called Bryant Lake Bowl which is connected to a bowling alley and a theatre.  Our University Museum, called the Bell Museum, hosts a monthly scientific talk there called Café Scientifique.  The audience, about 90, is waited on by the bar staff during the talk and so everyone is quite comfortable.  The speaker may also partake if he or she so desires (how could I resist – after all, it was the only compensation I received).  So I had a pint of Surly – on an empty stomach – during the talk!  I’m a lightweight, so let’s just say I was relaxed.  It was about an hour presentation followed by almost an hour of questions.  I don’t think it was my best talk ever, but I don’t know that I’ve ever had a better time giving a talk (The title, by the way, was The Truth About Organics).  It was an audience largely composed of a demographic I rarely get to talk to out side of my classes – young (20-30 yr old) people who were very curious about where food comes from and who really hadn’t spent much time thinking about it before.

 

Fall color time…

Did you ever know one of those annoying people who always talks about how great everything is back wherever they were from; the kind of folks that make you want to say, “If things were so much better there, why are you here?”  I have to confess I’m one of those people.  No one’s ever actually given me the “If things were so much better there” line, but I’m sure my Michigan friends have been tempted.  I’m warming to things Michigan but I suspect in my heart of hearts I’ll always consider myself a Washingtonian.

 

That said, there are some ways that Michigan has Washington beat.  We have long, lovely sandy beaches where the water gets warm enough to swim in; which for me means at least 75 deg. F.  Washington has great beaches, of course, but you’ll never see anyone over the age of 12 in the water without a wetsuit – even in August.  We have real thunderstorms spring, summer, fall and occasionally even thundersnow in the winter!  Western Washington is lucky to have two or three bouts of muffled thunder each year.  And we have real fall color thanks to red maples, sugar maples, oaks, sassafras, tulip poplars and others.  Conifers dominate the Northwest and what few large hardwoods there are (big leaf maple, red alder, black cottonwood) drop their leaves inconspicuously without much fanfare.  Vine maples try to make up the difference but usually just add a splash of color here and there.

 

As with many states with rich fall color, “leaf peeping” or “leaf looking” is a popular fall pastime and many people plan fall getaways to northern Michigan to enjoy the color show.  For someone in a position like mine, that means calls from media, AAA, and others asking for predictions on whether we’ll have good fall color.  Of course it’s difficult to predict since conditions during fall itself (i.e., sunny days and cool nights) are among the biggest determinants.  We do know that drought conditions late in the summer can result in early leaf drop or limit production of some secondary pigments, resulting in a shorter and more muted display.  For us in Michigan that suggests a below average fall color show up North since many counties have received 50% or less of their normal rainfall since July.

 

For those interested in learning more about fall color, I high recommend ‘The Fall Color Guy’ website http://biology.appstate.edu/fall-colors The site is maintained by Dr. Howie Neufeld, Professor of Plant Physiology at Appalachian State University.  Howie and I crossed paths at the University of Georgia when he was a visiting scientist and I was a Ph.D. student.  He provides some of the best information I’ve seen on the science of leaf color and his essays on the website are good reads.

My Thoughts on 2,4 D

 

My sister, who lives in the Pittsburgh area, just gave me a call.  She and her husband have two kids and a lawn and she wanted to know my feelings about using herbicides to keep the grass free of weeds.  When we were growing up our parents had a large lawn (and lots of fruit trees) and it took two of us two hours to mow the whole thing.  It kind of turned her off to grass.  The truth of the matter is that she doesn’t even want the lawn she currently has, but her husband wants it – and he wants it weed free.  So she called me giving me the “you’re supposed to know about this stuff” line and asked me what she should do.  My response was that the herbicide her husband would be applying (trimec) wasn’t on my list of super bad things to apply, but that, in my opinion too many people want their lawn too free of weeds.   I don’t see anything wrong with applying an herbicide once a year – it won’t keep a lawn pristine, but it will knock out most of what most people want knocked out.  Why do people insist on having spotless yards – applying herbicides from three to six times per lawn per year?  It’s insane.  Not so much for the safety of humans, but for the good of the lawn ecosystem.  It’s good to have a mix of different plants – it’s healthy.  Using an herbicide really cuts down on you biodiversity, and can affect the safety of dogs too.  You see, 2,4 D, probably the most used pesticide on lawns in the US (and a component of trimec), isn’t rapidly excreted by dogs.  If we are exposed to 2,4 D we just pee it out – our kidneys process it rapidly and out it goes.  In a dog’s system this chemical sits and sits.  It is for this reason that 2,4 D is considered particularly bad for dogs and is suspected of potentially causing cancer.

One more note about dogs.  The reason that lawns get dog spots is because of the amount of nitrogen in the dogs urine – it kills plants – it IS NOT because of the pH of the urine.

Pop quiz answer

Today’s post is a follow-up to yesterday’s quiz on foliar fertilization.  I asked our blog readers to match the needle nitrogen content of Nordmann fir trees with the fertilizer treatments they had received.


Nutrient deficient Nordmann fir

The correct order is:

1)      control: no fertilizer 0.98%
2)      soil applied controlled release fertilizer 1.70%
3)      foliar nitrogen fertilizer 1.14%
4)      soil applied fertilizer + foliar feed 1.91%

While the foliar fert had a small effect, it’s important to note that, from a statistical standpoint, foliar fertilization did not significantly increase needle nitrogen concentration.  Moreover, foliar feeding alone was not sufficient to overcome the nitrogen deficiency of the control trees.  The main effect was from fertilizing the soil (actually container substrate is this case).

The take home message is that plants have evolved (or God designed them, if you prefer) to take up nutrients from the soil through their ROOTS.  They’ve been doing it for millions years and have been getting along quite nicely, thank you.  No matter how slick and clever the marketing, attempts to ‘short-circuit’ the process such as foliar feeding or trunk injection are short-term solutions at best or, as in this case, almost totally ineffective.  Foliar feeding and trunk injection treat symptoms, not causes.  Plant nutrient deficiencies occur because: 1) an element is lacking in the soil or 2) because the plant can’t absorb enough of the element (e.g., iron chlorosis).  Effectively dealing with a plant nutrient problem requires understanding which of those two situations is occurring and why.    

Pop quiz time!

It’s the start of new semester.  Best way to get student’s attention is with a pop quiz right off the bat!  So in that vein, we’ll cross things up and give a quiz on Monday instead Friday.  Relax; to make things a little easier we’ll make this one a matching exercise.

 

Here goes.  At our recent Christmas tree conference in Austria, a colleague of mine at Oregon State University, Chal Landgren, presented the results of a study to look at the effectiveness of foliar fertilization on Nordmann fir.  Trees were grown in 15 gallon containers and assigned to one of four groups:

1)      control: no fertilizer

2)      soil applied controlled release fertilizer

3)      foliar nitrogen fertilizer

4)      soil applied fertilizer + foliar feed

 

Since Chal has yet to publish this I need to be a little careful with details but all fertilizers were commercially available products labeled and marketed for this purpose and were applied at manufacturers’ suggested rates and intervals.

 

At the end of the growing season, the trees were sampled for needle nitrogen content.  As a point of reference a needle nitrogen content of 1.5 – 1.6 % is usually deemed adequate for this species.

 

For your quiz: match the treatments listed above to the nitrogen concentrations below:

a)      1.14%

b)      1.91%

c)      0.98%

d)     1.70%

 

Answer and discussion tomorrow…

 

Bambara

This past summer I had the chance to talk with an old friend of mine, Hamado Tapsoba, who I hadn’t seen in 15 years.  We had gone to graduate school together, but after graduation he headed back to Burkina Faso, and I headed up to Minnesota.  Anyway, while we were talking I told him that we were growing peanuts at the University (yes, I tell everybody — peanut news needs to be shared!).  When I told him some of the problems that we had with shorter seasons he asked why we weren’t growing Bambara groundnuts.  The answer was that I didn’t know what the heck Bambara groundnuts were.  Well, it turns out that these nuts are native to Western Africa and grow under the surface of the soil just like peanuts.  The reason Hamado recommended them to me was that they can have a growing cycle shorter than peanuts.  They can also be cooked like peanuts and have a flavor somewhat similar to chickpeas (or so I’m told).  I’ve had an incredible amount of difficulty finding Bambara in the US though I know that at one time they were grown here.  We have found a researcher in Burkina Faso who is willing to work with us, but that will probably take some time to get going.  Does anyone out there know about Bambara?  Especially where to buy plants or seed?)  It sounds like an exciting plant to work with.

Just for ewe: An alternative approach to weed control.

As I mentioned in the last post I was in Austria this past week for the International Christmas Tree Research and Extension conference. We hold these meetings every two years for Christmas tree researchers in Europe and North America to get together and share the latest research on various aspects of Christmas tree production and marketing. In addition to research presentations the programs also include tours of local Christmas tree farms, which is always the most interesting part of the conference.

 

In Austria one of our tour stops was an organic Christmas tree farm operated by Regina and Michael Spenger.  For the most part, my views on organic systems are in line with those that Jeff Gilman has voiced here on the GP blog.  There are certainly benefits in reducing pesticide use but it’s not a given that an organic approach is always superior to a conventional system.  Nevertheless one hallmark of organic production is that growers must be creative and often develop innovative approaches to production issues.  This is especially true when it comes to weed control; one of the most difficult challenges of organic growing.  Good weed control is essential in Christmas tree production since grasses and broadleaved weeds are aggressive competitors for water, nutrients and light.  To control weeds without herbicides the Spenger’s settled on a novel idea: Sheep.  Each morning they release a herd of 40 Shropshire sheep into a plantation and let them munch away.  The sheep are allowed to graze for a week and then rotated into another field.  Shropshires are well suited to the job since they graze readily on the grass and forbs but leave the trees alone.  The Spenger’s also get some small additional returns by selling a few lambs each spring as well as some wool.  Obviously this approach has limitations but it certainly highlights important aspect of the organic movement that can benefit all production systems: looking at problems in a different way and thinking creatively.

The sheep herd heading out to a plantation to start their day’s work…


To say that sheep grazing in an Austrian plantation creates an idyllic scene is an understatement.


Marketing naturally grown Christmas trees.

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If it’s Monday this must be Austria…

Just a quick post from on the road.  My family and I have been traveling through Europe the past week and a half.  A bit of a whorl-wind trip combining some vacation and work travel.  We started off a week and half ago, flying into Frankfurt.  We rented a car and drove to Paris where we spent a couple of days sightseeing. Then it was off to southern France to visit friends that run a bed and breakfast there.  This weekend we drove from France to lower Austria where I am attending our biennial International Christmas tree Research and Extension conference.  I’ll have a few bits to report from the meeting later but for now I’ll just close with a few random acts of Horticulture from France.


Trees shaped like boxes…


Trees in boxes…


Horsechestnuts.  Europe is big on horsechestnuts.  Unfortunately most of them are scorched to a crisp and look like crap.


Pollarding.  Europe is big on pollarding.  Occasionally it’s done well and creates some neat effects.  More often, like here, it’s done poorly and just makes a mess.


A green wall.  Green roofs and green walls can help to reduce urban heat island effect.  This green wall is mainly for show, I think.  It’s made up of ferns and other mesic plants and requires constant mist irrigation.  Not exactly a sustainable system, but it is dramatic and certainly commands attention.

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Toxic mulch: When shredded bark goes bad

We typically think of mulching landscape beds as a good thing.  And it usually is; helping to conserve soil moisture, reducing soil temperatures and contributing to soil organic matter.  Recently, however, I received an e-mail from a local landscaper that reported severe damage to annuals and perennials in a landscape bed immediately after applying hardwood mulch.  The problem, sometimes referred to as ‘sour mulch’ or ‘toxic mulch’, occurs when mulch is left is large piles and undergoes anaerobic conditions.  This results in the production of acids and other compounds that can volatilize when the mulch is placed in beds, especially during hot weather.  These vapors can quickly damage annuals and other sensitive plants.  Mulch in this condition is often characterized by a ‘sour’ smell.  If you suspect your mulch has gone sour, spread it out before use to allow toxins to dissipate and water thoroughly either before or immediately after application.  The University of Arkansas Extension has a nice fact sheet in the subject “Plant injury from ‘sour’ wood mulch.http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-6138.pdf


Fried Gerber daisy


Sedums are usually pretty tough…

And, yes, I did steal the title of this post from one of my all-time favorite ‘Far Sides’…

 

This Bud’s for you…

Ask the risk of honing in on Jeff’s turf, I thought I’d pass along this article by former University of Maine associate dean (and apparent Garden Professor wannabe) Katheryn Olmstead.   It seems that Dr. Olmstead’s painstaking research has documented a preference among slugs for domestic beers, particularly Budweiser.  http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/21/living/garden-slugs-prefer-budweiser-over-foreign-brands/  Like most undergraduate students, it seems slugs prefer domestic swill to more refined imported brews; confirming many suspicions about both slugs and undergrads.  Although we’ll have to wait for the full peer-reviewed article, her scientific method seems sound, including use of replicated plots.  That said, her admitted qualms about being seen purchasing two six-packs in the same week raises doubts about Dr. Olmstead’s eventual rise to the rank of full Garden Professor