Agriculture plays an essential role in every person’s life each day, yet many of us do not know or appreciate how our food is produced. As part of a nationwide effort to educate people about the immense effort which goes into growing food and the importance of agriculture in our daily lives, The American Council…
March 21, 2015 has officially been declared the International Day of Forests, by the United Nations General Assembly. As the most biologically diverse, terrestrial ecosystems forests provide habitat and food for wildlife, act as a sink for carbon, help improve and protect water quality and provide jobs and shelter for communities around the world. Forests…
Dogwood trees, of the genus Cornus, can make beautiful and mostly hardy additions to a landscape. Their small to medium size and shrub or tree habits allow for various applications around the landscape. Beautiful blooms of yellow to creamy white or pink and vibrant fall foliage colors along with exfoliating bark or horizontal branching add…
Spring is just around the corner, although it may not feel that way, and with it will come yard work such as raking, trimming, mowing, weeding, fertilizing, pest and disease control and more. Just remember when you are out and about cleaning up after this harsh winter and preparing your beds and gardens, do not…
While the previously known dangers of deforestation are already severe and somewhat grim; less carbon absorption, loss of habitat, biodiversity decreases etc. a new study indicates that it could also be exposing more people to deadly, infectious diseases like the Bubonic plague. While societies of the western world have largely forgotten about the “Black Death”,…
An English oak, Quercus robur, living on a football (soccer) field in Estonia has won the European Tree of the Year award with nearly 60,000 votes! The Estonian tree earned 59, 836 votes, approximately one third of the total 185,000 votes cast in this year’s contest. This 150 year old specimen stands in a soccer…
Precision agriculture is a modern farming practice employed to make production more efficient. Precision agriculture, also referred to as “site-specific agriculture”, allows farmers to work smarter rather than harder by tailoring management and cultivation practices according the actual needs of the site. Farmers and site managers can take vast expanses of fields and treat them…
A common disease among eastern hard pines is eastern gall rust. In the U.S. the range of this disease includes Minnesota eastward to the New England states and south to the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Host trees include Scotch, Austrian, Jack, Pitch, Shortleaf and Loblolly pines, each within their respective range. Red, black…
A rain garden is a depression, hole, bucket or pond intentionally created and placed in order to collect rainwater runoff from impervious structures and surfaces like roofs, driveways, parking lots, roads and overly compacted lawns. They help reduce runoff and aid in stormwater infiltration or allow for water to be used for irrigation around the…
The story of our lives up here in the great white north these days revolves around weekly storms dumping large amounts of snow, wreaking havoc on roads, causing problems for schools and leaving homeowners with major removal problems. While getting rid of snow in our driveways and yards is a pain in the neck and…
