Test PB Collection: FTE

If you're around creeks, ponds and irrigation ditches, watch for the dragonflies. We spotted scores of variegated meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum) last Sunday along an irrigation ditch bordering a sunflower field in Winters, Calif.

The San Joaquin Valley boasts many of Americas most innovative farms.

So you want to capture an image of a praying mantis. You have to find one first. Sometimes it's a case of hide 'n seek--it hides, you seek. Mantises, or mantids, are camouflaged.

A couple of weeks ago, a PCA brought me some grassy "weeds" from a field. The plants had ligules, so they weren't watergrass or barnyardgrass. The leaves were thin and long, but did not look like sprangletop; they just looked like "elongated" rice plants.

You can't drive by a sunflower field without smiling. Their golden heads turned toward the sun, their fringed petals aglow, sunflowers set an amicable scene in a world sometimes darkened by strife and sorrow. Take, for example, the sunflower fields along Pedrick Road in Dixon, Calif.

There are many reasons why honey bees don't come home at night. One of them: a stealthy praying mantis. If you like to photograph flowers, odds are that some day you'll see more than one insect on a blossom.

When youngsters meet Alyssa Fine, the first thing they ask is Do you ever get stung? They also ask if the bee population is still declining and if shes a beekeeper. Yes, yes, and yes. Alyssa Fine, 23, of Monongahela, Penn., is accustomed to answering questions.

Today I thought I'd share a recent research report on the the phenomenon of "enhanced" degradation of the herbicide simazine in citrus orchard soils. Click here for a link to the publication in the open-source journal, Air, Soil, and Water Research (Abit et al. 2012.

Today I thought I'd share a recent research report on the the phenomenon of "enhanced" degradation of the herbicide simazine in citrus orchard soils. Click here for a link to the publication in the open-source journal, Air, Soil, and Water Research (Abit et al. 2012.

In conjunction with the USDA Range Management group out of Oregon and many Weed Scientists throughout the western US, a two day field school will focus on improving the management and threat of invasive plants, and especially cheatgrass and medusahead.