Project Budburst Needs Citizen Scientists

Project Budburst 2008 got underway yesterday. Thanks to NPR's "Living on Earth" for showcasing the new project and website in today's radio broadcast. Project Budburst is a bottom-up data collection effort that needs citizen scientists of any age (many current participants are children) to observe the timing of bud blooms in their gardens and communities. Observations are logged, by plant species and geographic location, in a centralized database which can then be used by participating academic partners to chart climate change. The project is part of the National Phenology Network (NPN) field campaign. The now inevitable process of global warming makes the once obscure field of historical climatology very timely and germane.

So if you've got a garden, or take daily walks in your local park you can contribute to this bottom-up, web-driven effort. This is one of the really great benefits of the Internet age. If you've got an interest, there is a job for you to do, and a community of like-minded peers that you can join.

Insect Predators - Gardening Miracles

My partner is an OSU-certified "master gardener." That means on our small acreage we've got an organic veggie garden, a greenhouse, a small plant cloning workshop, and lots of empty white plastic bottles (which we recycle) laying around. It also means we have home made tomato sauce in Winter, jams and jellies to die for, our own red-wine and lots of flowers for cutting. I am continually grateful for our decision to locate on this land in this wonderful place 17 years ago yesterday.

So about this time, we've got a lot of starts in our greenhouse that are getting ready for the garden. And some flowers ripening under lights. We also have the occasional problem with nasty, herbivorous insects. Being organic gardeners, we use a variety of natural remedies - taking into account the life-cycle behaviors of the critters we discover. For example, Thrips spend two different parts of their life-cycle in the soil and can be effectively eliminated with nematode predators. Insects that live and breath in planting mix can also be controlled with a layer of diatomaceous earth, which effectively shreds their bodies as they climb out of the soil. But of course, not all insects can be controlled through the soil. Spider mites can also be a pain. And don't even get me started on white fly. So we use a variety of natural insect predators from Nature's Control. They ship overnight, so check them out if your flowers are blooming - and you want to keep it that way without chemical pesticides.