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Ag and Extension

Working at the Yellow Medicine SWCD

My name is Landon Abraham. I am one of the two Yellow Medicine Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) Conservation technician apprentices working with the office this year. I grew up on a farm in Yellow Medicine County near St. Leo. I graduated high school in May 2018 from Minneota High School. I currently attend South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota, and will be starting my sophomore year this fall. I am currently majoring in agronomy with a minor in ag business. After my undergrad, I hope to go on and get a master’s degree in plant science. Eventually, I hope ...

Remedies for the garden

We are still waiting for Mother Nature to get her affairs in order. The cool weather this spring has sent some of our plants into a tailspin including iris and some tulips. I have fielded many questions on why iris plants are not blooming this year. This is because about the time that they set their blooms, we were having some pretty cold, rough weather. This damaged the bloom buds so this is why your iris may not have given you pretty flowers this spring. The same goes for tulips. I have a couple of gardens that the tulips flowered while in other gardens, they did not. It is best to ...

A challenging year

I think that with all of the rain that we have been receiving we might need a little reverse psychology this year. If you are like me, last year was a terrible year to establish a vegetable garden and to keep it going. Perennial flower gardens seem to just eat this type of weather up. It is starting to remind me of 1993’s weather pattern. The vegetable gardens don’t like so much water and want a lot more heat which last year did not provide. In fact, a few 70 degree days seem awful warm probably because it has been so cool. Gardeners last year had mixed results. There were just as ...

Ag Briefs

USDA reopens Continuous CRP signup USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) will accept applications beginning June 3 for certain practices under the continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) signup and will offer extensions for expiring CRP contracts. The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized CRP, one of the country’s largest conservation programs. FSA stopped accepting applications last fall for the continuous CRP signup when 2014 Farm Bill authority expired. Since passage of the 2018 Farm Bill last December, USDA FSA Administrator Richard Fordyce said FSA has carefully analyzed the language ...

Lawn care

When the rain decides to stop, we will all be out mowing our lawns. There isn’t anything like the smell of freshly cut grass on a spring day especially if it is the first couple of times that we are able to get out and mow. Lawn care is getting a lot of press these days because our lawns are not the most sustainable pieces that we include on our properties. There is a call out for allowing certain plants to be left alone in our lawns so we can produce a bee friendly or a pollinator friendly lawn. And even though our lawns are not the most sustainable pieces of our gardens, they do ...

Sustainable practices for gardens

Sustainability is something that creates a functional space in our outdoor garden spaces. This includes choosing plants that will live a long time. It could also include creating special habits such as pollinator gardens or native prairie gardens in our spaces. It also creates backyard spaces that take less water or less chemicals. You may even create a space that includes a rainwater garden. These are all some very small steps that a gardener can take for their own gardening spaces. Sustainable practices in our gardens will lead to less use of water, chemicals and hopefully more time ...