By now, most people are aware of the declining honeybee population. What is not as well know is wild bees are having the same problems. Wild bees are important because in many instances they are more efficient at pollinating some crops than are honeybees. They are also highly adapted to pollinating wild flowering plants, making them … Continue Reading →
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The lawn of the future
Imagine self-propelled robotic lawn groomers, too sophisticated to be called merely lawn mowers, taking care of your lawn without any help from you. Miniature drones with intelligent eyesight hovering over your lawn identifying weeds insects and diseases, zapping them with pin-point precision accuracy. All this guided by on-board artificial intelligence leaving behind an absolutely flat, … Continue Reading →
The lawn of the future
Imagine self-propelled robotic lawn groomers, too sophisticated to be called merely lawn mowers, taking care of your lawn without any help from you. Miniature drones with intelligent eyesight hover over your lawn identifying weeds insects and diseases, zapping them with pin-point precision accuracy. All this guided by on-board artificial intelligence leaving behind an absolutely flat, … Continue Reading →
Liking that lovage
Every once in a while we’ll be making something that calls for celery, such as potato salad or chicken soup. I’ll check the fridge only to find out there’s no celery in the crisper drawer. Not to fear, there’s a perennial plant growing in the garden that’s always on standby for such an eventuality — … Continue Reading →
The case of the missing apples
At a social function I attended this past weekend, the conversation turned to gardening. A friend mentioned his apple trees were being raided by an unknown animal. This animal was very stealthy, so stealthy in fact, that it left virtually no trace of ever being there. The thief left no footprint despite the fact that … Continue Reading →
Milkweeds can be weeds
In this day and age pretty much everyone knows about the relationship between monarch butterflies and milkweed plants. It wasn’t always that way. Before modern chemical weed killers, farmers had limited ways of dealing with weeds. Depending on the weather conditions, a farmer might have to go over a field two or three times with … Continue Reading →
Finding a sphinx moth pupa
Butterflies and moths overwinter in different forms depending on the species. For example, the famous monarch overwinters as an adult, swallowtails in the chrysalis stage. Other species of moths or butteries spend the winter as as eggs or as pupae. Earlier this week I was filling up a plant container with growing mix that I … Continue Reading →
An iris that blooms near the end of daffodil season
Our Pumila iris, also called dwarf iris, has been putting on a colorful show for several days now. Each spring we look forward to them coming into bloom just as the daffodils are fading, weeks before other irises even think about blooming We have a hot, dry, sandy area right along our walkway that closely … Continue Reading →
A potato planting experiment
This year I’ve decided to try a minor experiment with my potatoes. I guess you might call it a kind of no-till planting. There are a couple of reasons I thought it might work well. First, the spot where they’re going was recently an area where some of my older chickens were penned in. I … Continue Reading →
Two weeks behind this spring
The colder-than-normal April has been a topic of conversation with just about everyone. Mostly I hear people complaining about it, but when I talk to people who spend a lot of their leisure time outdoors, the conversation gets much more interesting. Fishermen I’ve talked to have mentioned how far behind their season is. Mushroom hunters … Continue Reading →
