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Ag and Extension

Curbing damage

As fall starts to turn to winter, gardeners are always looking for ways to curb animal damage to our plants. We should also include other forms of damage that can occur such as heavy snow load, ice damage and salt damage too. For the most part, the U of M Extension recommends the use of either all white tubing or tree wrap for those more sensitive plants that we worry about, which generally are those trees that are less than 5 years old. The use of black tubing is never a good idea as it can heat up the bark on one side of the tree, which will cause the bark to crack and break, ...

Insecticidal soap

Managing our gardens is very important in order to keep diseases under control as well as insects. This summer, while many of us did quite well with our vegetable gardens and our perennial gardens, we did see a higher than usual number of certain insects in our gardens. As we all become more familiar with the need to protect pollinator insects, we have recognized that insecticides will kill all insects, good or bad. We are all learning that indiscriminate spraying of pesticides will also kill bees and other insects that we want to keep. This has brought many of us to rethink pesticides ...

Lyon County is eligible for FSA emergency loans

Lyon County was declared a primary disaster due to drought and heat using the streamlined Secretarial Disaster Declaration process. Under this designation, if you have operations in any primary or contiguous county, you are eligible to apply for low interest emergency loans. The streamlined disaster declaration process issues a drought disaster declaration when a county has experienced a drought intensity value of at least D2 (severe drought) level for eight consecutive weeks based on the U.S. Drought Monitor during the crop year. Emergency loans help you recover from production ...

High Tech Robotic Dairy Field Day on Sept. 22

University of Minnesota Extension will host a summer field day at Golden Sunrise Dairy, 31328 290 St SW, McIntosh on Sept. 22. Golden Sunrise Dairy is owned and managed by Tim Rolf and his son, Derek. In 2020, they moved into a new high technology, automated cross ventilated barn featuring the latest in dairy technology. Calves are fed on automatic calf feeders. Cows are milked with Lely A5 milking robots. Cows and heifers are fed with an automatic feeding system that weighs, mixes and delivers the correct diet to the correct group of animals. In addition, all manure is removed from ...

Gardening challenges

Gardening, particularly vegetable gardening certainly can be challenging. A good example of this is set around the experimentation of a new variety of green bean. I don’t like them. It could be the heat and the dry weather (even though I did water continuously) but the green beans came out flat and somewhat woody. I don’t think I will try this variety again. I am glad that I also grew one of my tested and true green bean varieties along with the new variety. In hot weather, plants such as peppers will drop their flowers and even sometimes, their small beginning fruit because the ...

Will our lawns recover?

The goodness of our vegetable gardens is coming in quickly now. If you are into canning and preserving, there is a lot to do in the garden. There are even some flowers, depending on if you are in an area that has had rain, that are still coming on strong. The rains are a hit and miss even in our area. It seems that it is a story of the haves and the have nots. The biggest question that I have been fielding is will our lawns recover. Lawns are dormant now and may remain so into winter provided it doesn’t rain. It is not a time to panic. Instead, be aware that there are other things ...