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Ag and Extension

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 ...

Cleaning up

The heavy ice storms we recently had took a toll on our trees. There were some people who had hardly any damage and others who had significant damage. The ash trees and silver maples in my yard took a big hit. We were lucky that no big branches damaged our house. We do, however, have a big mess to clean up. There are several questions to ask before digging into your clean up. The first is to make sure that all of the larger tree branches have fallen so that no one who is working under the trees is exposed to a possible accident waiting to happen. The second question is if a tree is ...

Ag and Extension Briefs

Beef Quality Assurance & Secure Beef Supply trainings set Today’s consumers are more interested than ever before on where and how the food they purchase is raised, which has led to an increased focus on our beef production systems — how we handle cattle, our use of pharmaceutical products, our feed management practices, and having an accurate and reliable record keeping system. University of Minnesota Extension along with Minnesota Beef Council will host three Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) and Secure Beef Supply (SBS) training sessions in southwest Minnesota. Producers attending ...

Emerald ash borer

Patience in more ways than one right now. The weather will get better to some degree or another; it always seems to even itself out. Stearns County is also having its patience tested because they have now found Emerald Ash Borer there too. City workers in the area were cleaning up and noticed some of the signs of EAB infestation and called authorities. EAB was first found in Minnesota in 2009 and Stearns County is the 18th county in Minnesota to have found this pest. The nearest site to the Stearns County site that became infected was 50 miles away. EAB can only travel a mile or two on ...

All-american Selection Winners

According to the All-American Selection Winners website, “AAS is the only national, nonprofit plant trialing organization in North America. All-America Selections is an independent nonprofit organization that tests new, never-before-sold varieties for the home gardener. After a full season of anonymous trialing by volunteer horticulture professionals, only the top garden performers are given the AAS Winner award designation for their superior performance.” There is all sorts of information regarding new plant material that is sold for gardeners throughout the U.S. We have to make ...