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 … Continue reading Pop quiz answer
We’ve finally gotten our summer here in the Pacific NW and it’s been pretty hot for a few weeks. The plants weren’t really prepared for this, so we’ve had to irrigate quite a bit to keep all that lush foliage happy. So the topic of this podcast is Water Works – focusing on how water … Continue reading Podcast #8 – Water Works
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 … Continue reading Pop quiz time!
I am just about the laziest gardener you’d ever want to meet. Around my field plots at the school things tend to look good –but that’s part of my job. Around my home, well, I probably water my plants once or twice a year, I fertilize every few years. I almost never use herbicides or … Continue reading Being Lazy Has Its Advantages
I get a lot of questions about a lot of different products and practices. New topics send me to the scientific data bases and that’s where I went for today’s posting. One of my garden writing colleagues asked me about colored glass rooters – glass containers in different colors that can be filled with water … Continue reading Does colored glass help root cuttings?
After getting off to a cool and soggy start, summer has come with a vengeance to Michigan, with heat indices expected to push 100 degrees by Wednesday. Along with warmer temperatures, summer also means our research season is getting into full swing as well. One of our biggest efforts these days involves our project to … Continue reading Getting to the root of the problem
(I know this one will get me into trouble…but hey, if I don’t tick someone off I’m not doing my job.) I have mixed feelings about the increased popularity of urban farming. On one hand, I love the idea that people are becoming more involved in producing their own food. But on the other hand, … Continue reading A rant about urban farming
This has been an exciting week for me. On Monday we started cleaning off 72 rootballs of various tree species that had been planted 5 years ago for a study. These trees had been planted in containers and become potbound at the nursery from which we received them. We treated them in one of three … Continue reading Harvesting an Experiment
A few weeks ago one of our readers, landscape architect Owen Dell, sent me a link to his blog where he takes on rain barrels. It’s a great analysis of the (im)practicalities of rain barrels and it got me to wondering how many of our readers (and my GP colleagues) use these as supplemental sources … Continue reading Rain barrels
[Extremely] Preliminary research results from the University of Maryland indicate chickens may be of interest in the fight against Halyomorpha halys, the brown marmorated stink bug. There are good stink bugs and bad stink bugs. The brown marmorated stink bug is a bad one. A relatively new introduced pest, it is piercing, sucking, and … Continue reading Off-label Use of a Chicken*