Will all the pollinators please stand up! Or do a fly-by like the Blue Angels or a crawl-by like babies competing in a diaper derby. Bees--there are more than 4000 of them in North America--are the main pollinators, but don't overlook butterflies, beetles, birds, bats and moths. And flies.
Capturing Precipitation - How much rainfall do I need to capture? Managing precipitation to your advantage is really a three step process (Lal and Stewart, 2012).
The circle of life... Monarch caterpillars feast on milkweed, their host plant. Oleander aphids feast on the juices of milkweed plants. Lady beetles, better known as ladybugs (but they're beetles, not bugs) feast on the aphids. The milkweed is the only plant that the monarch caterpillars eat.
Dragonflies are fierce predators but they are predator-shy. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck," as the saying goes.
It is possible to blame a lot of things on the Drought, and here's another one. There have been reports of damaged fruit from the leaffooted bug - Leptoglossus occidentalis, although there are other species. This is a relative of stinkbugs which we have been seeing quite a number of this year.
The second annual ASPRS UAS Technical Demonstration and Symposium was held in Reno, NV last week (ASPRS and UAS, being short for American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Unmanned Aerial Systems).
Conventional strawberry producers should consider use of cereal cover-crops in the furrows of strawberry plantings. The advantages of this are improved water percolation, reduced soil erosion as well as weed suppression.
National 4-H Week begins. Open House and Achievement Awards at the Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Featured Club: Santa Rosa Valley.
The Ventura County 4-H office has a new home at the Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Santa Paula. It's that time of year again - Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat is set to begin.
