It’s hard to believe it, but we are in our fourth year of a project establishing perennial wildflowers and grasses to support populations of pollinators and natural enemies of pests. You can read more about this ongoing project in past blog posts, but in just a few weeks, you can also come visit these plots … Continue reading Come learn about creating habitat for beneficial insects!
As many people did, we had to change our plans for this project in response to COVID-19. The biggest change was that we didn’t collect any insects this year. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you saw some pictures of different insects I spotted while visiting these plots this summer. Here are a … Continue reading Creating Habitat for Beneficial Insects: 2020 Growing Season Update
Well, the days are getting shorter, the air is getting cooler, and pumpkins are starting to show up on front porches. I guess it’s time for me to admit that fall is coming. So it seemed like a good time to provide an update on my efforts to establish habitat for beneficial insects around my … Continue reading Creating beneficial habitat at home: Fall update
It’s been two months since I since I wrote about the plants I selected to provide habitat for beneficial insects around my home. Today I’ll talk a bit about weed control and how my spring transplants are doing. Weed control I have mentioned before that managing weeds turns out to be far more than half … Continue reading Beneficial habitat at home: Weed control and mid-summer update
Hopefully you’ve been following along with a project I’m working on with Betsy Lamb and Brian Eshenaur to establish (and document the impacts of) habitat for natural enemies of pests and pollinators (collectively, beneficial insects). In December, I wrote about how the plants were growing, and in February I wrote about the time and money … Continue reading Creating habitat for beneficial insects: We planted it. Did they come?
Recall from this post that I’m creating habitat for beneficial arthropods (including insects, spiders, predatory mites, etc.) around my house this spring. Because more of us may be doing this while we’re staying home to keep each other safe, I’m sharing my experiences here (as well as on Twitter and Instagram). The previous post covered … Continue reading Choosing plants for Beneficial Habitat At Home
In December, I updated you on how perennial wildflowers and grasses were establishing in our beneficial insect habitat plots during the 2019 growing season. As I wrote that post, I quickly realized that there was too much good information for just one post. So here’s the rest of the story when it comes to plant … Continue reading Creating habitat for beneficial insects: Time, money, and weeds
Obviously, nothing is growing right now, but I thought this would be a good time to update you on the success of our beneficial insect habitat plots during the 2019 growing season. When things bloomed Recall that the goal is to have at least one plant blooming all season long. We choose wildflower species accordingly, … Continue reading Creating habitat for beneficial insects: How are things growing?
You’ve read about all the different methods we are testing for establishing native wildflowers and grasses as habitat for pollinators and natural enemies of pests. You know we learned a lot in our first season. You know we’ve been using several different techniques to collect insects in these plots. And you saw a pictorial summary … Continue reading Come visit our beneficial insect habitat plots!
Last year I introduced you to the research field at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, NY where Dr. Betsy Lamb, Brian Eshenaur and I are studying and demonstrating Christmas tree IPM. One part of this project is using perennial wildflowers to attract natural enemies of pests as part of an IPM strategy. The wildflowers (and some … Continue reading Creating habitat for beneficial insects: Starting Year 2