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Ag and Extension

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 ...

Helping pollinators

Gardeners celebrate Earth Day each and every day. In particular, we do our best to provide food for our pollinators. We are all thinking about them but there are a few ways that you can help pollinators that you might not have thought of. We have to remember that there are more than just honey bees that pollinate our flowers and our food. There are many different kinds of bees, other insects such as butterflies and even bats. There are many ways to provide food other than flowers in our gardens. There are also our lawns. According to Julie Weisenhorn, there is a bill in Minnesota ...

Safe handling of treated seed

A significant amount of seed planted this year will have been treated with one or more fungicide, insecticide, nematicide, or biological seed treatments. The following are some key precautions and reminders to follow when working with treated seed to help prevent pesticide exposure to handlers, non-target organisms, and the environment. • Read the seed tag label. This is a basic, but key first step in understanding what steps and precautions to take when working with seed that has been treated with a particular product(s). Be familiar with any restrictions listed on the ...