Backyard Orchard News
Bee Swarm!
Bee swarms are absolutely fascinating.Several years ago, when bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey...
Honey bee swarm in the North Hall/Dutton Hall complex at UC Davis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
UC teaches kids about food and farming
Nearly 2,000 third-graders visited the Fresno County fairgrounds March 23 to learn about the connection between the food they eat and their home county's No. 1 economic driver, agriculture.
Farm and Nutrition Day is sponsored by the Fresno County Farm Bureau and the Fresno Fair. UC Cooperative Extension in Fresno County has been involved since the event's inception in 2005; this was the first year for the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center to bring an educational booth to the event.
KARE program and facility coordinator Laura Van Der Staay and her assistant Julie Sievert secured donations of lettuce seedlings, potting soil and pots to give to the children who visited the booth. In addition, Van Der Staay and Sievert used a felt board to teach the children about the benefits of eating right and exercise.
Ladies (and Men) in Red
Two ladybugs, aka lady beetles, circled their little house, a 1.5-inch plastic container punctured...
Ladybug devouring an aphid on a rose bush. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Insect Diversity in the Fava Beans
The first day of spring--Tuesday, March 20--yielded a diversity of insects in the fava beans...
Count the insects! Ladybugs, a European paper wasp, blow fly and aphids are all over the fava beans in the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
European paper wasp and a pair of ladybugs in the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Stink bug occupies a fava bean leaf. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee foraging on the fava beans. Note the gray load of pollen.(Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Solar tents help stop the spread of weeds at remote sites
Research by Jim Stapleton, a UC Cooperative Extension advisor and Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program Coordinator for Natural Resources, based at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, was published as Feasibility of solar tents for inactivating weedy plant propagative material in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Pest Science.
Stapleton was inspired to conduct the study when a fire crew came upon a patch of Iberian starthistle growing along a stream in the Sierra foothills near Mariposa. Iberian starthistle is a robust, spiny weed native to the Middle East that, left unchecked, can dominate entire landscapes.
“Crews were going through and cutting dried plants and stacking them, but the seeds survived,” Stapleton said. “If you start moving plant material around with viable seeds, seeds are liable to spread, making the problem worse instead of better.”
Iberian starthistle is only one of many exotic, invasive plants that are capable of transforming California’s open areas into useless and unsightly tracts of land. On rangeland, for example, such weeds diminish desirable annual rangeland feed for cattle and wildlife. Weeds can shade out native wildflowers, make recreational areas inaccessible and, in dense infestations, become a fire laddering fuel.
In the past, such weeds may have been stacked and burned, but fire danger and air quality regulations have forced land managers to find alternatives.
“You wouldn’t want to try this on a 40-acre area,” Stapleton said. “Eradication of weeds with solar tents is best suited for small-scale weed infestations in warm climates.”
For the research project, Stapleton constructed three replicate solar tents with concrete rubble, mulberry shoots and clear plastic tarps. He placed johnsongrass rhizomes inside black trash bags along with about one cup of water. The sample bags were left inside the solar tents for 72 hours.
“Regardless of where you are, regardless of financial resources, you should be able to construct a solar tent,” Stapleton said. “Most of the materials needed – rocks and sticks – are easy to find on site.”
Air temperature inside the sample bags rose to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the three days of the experiment, the rhizomes were exposed to temperatures 140 degrees and higher for 10 hours. None of the rhizome segments treated for three days in the solar tents sprouted. In contrast, rhizomes maintained in clear vegetable storage boxes and kept indoors for comparison all sprouted.
Annotated diagrams for suggested construction of solar tents can be found on the UC Solarization website.