Deicing salts

December 17, 2020

While there are loads of crazy things happening in the world right now, one thing that we Minnesotans can be grateful for is our current weather situation. The early October snows had me and many others wondering if we were going to have one of “those” winters. The longer we go without snow and pretty tame temperatures, I think it helps to shorten up the winter considerably. Since we don’t have to deal with the snowy conditions, yet, Murphy’s law says eventually we will have some sort of precipitation, and with that comes the need to use deicing salts on our driveways and ...

Watch out for ‘hitchhikers’

December 9, 2020

As we start to decorate our homes and yard with greenery for the holidays, there are a few things to keep in the back of your mind as you are out purchasing wreaths, Christmas trees, and other plant material. There are quite a few of these plant materials coming into Minnesota from other states and they may include some hitchhikers. These hitchhikers are often pests and diseases that can infect our trees and shrubs in Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, these diseases and pests are often the ones we don’t normally see here and we need to look for them ...

Soil Management Summit moves online

November 19, 2020

Like many annual events, this year’s Soil Management Summit (SMS), formerly known as the Conservation Tillage Conference or CTC, has had to make the transition from in-person to online. The SMS planning committee wants to ensure the health and wellbeing of participants, vendors, and everyone else involved in the summit’s production while maintaining the high standard of programmatic content the event has provided over the years. As the COVID-19 situation has evolved, the committee made the decision that this event will be offered online only.  The Soil Management Summit (SMS) ...

Christmas trees

November 19, 2020

It is that time of the year when we are starting to look forward to putting up the Christmas tree in our homes. So, what do you think is the most popular Christmas tree to purchase for the holidays? Keep reading to find out! If you wanted to purchase a native tree to Minnesota, could you do it and if so, what is the variety? Each holiday season, there are a little over half a million real Christmas trees sold to families in Minnesota. There has been a debate for some time what is better for the environment — a real tree or a tree made from plastics? Well, we won’t get into that ...

Protecting your plants

November 14, 2020

There is a bunny rabbit that has been living in and near a community garden that I take care of in Marshall. Generally, I only know he or she is there when I just about step on it while I am weeding or planting something in the garden. I am also making the assumption that this is the same animal that must have chewed on some of the shrubs that are also planted in the garden last winter. Well, what can you say about last winter other than it seems for wild animals it is survival of the fittest. This is the time of the year to try to make sure that some of your prized plants don’t ...

Outside plants

October 22, 2020

It is that time of the year when we need to start thinking about how to take care of those plants outside before we are sent into the deep freeze for a few months. Mulching is very important to protect plants from winter kill and it can be done in several different ways. The first thing to know is that it takes a while before our ground is cold enough to freeze. While we had snow this week, it also acts as a blanket against any cold temperatures which help to keep the ground from freezing quickly. Snow has a lot of good qualities for our plants which is good because, after a while, we ...