Insect Eggs – Exploring the Garden

Insect Eggs – Exploring the Garden

What kinds of insect eggs can you find in the garden? During the summer months, I work a lot, from 6 to 5 every weekday. Where do I find the time for hunting bugs, insect eggs, and other things in the garden? Well, I spend most of my lunch period each day hiking woods and […]

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Swallowtail Butterflies in Your Garden

Swallowtail Butterflies in Your Garden

Attracting swallowtail butterflies to the garden is something many gardeners strive for. Why do we love swallowtail butterflies? It is because these butterflies are large, showy, and fun to watch. Even as a child I watched the large yellow and black striped Eastern Tiger Swallowtail swooping and landing on the garden phlox in my grandmother’s […]

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Aphids in the Garden and Landscape

Aphids in the Garden and Landscape

Aphids can be a real tricky problem to manage. These tiny little pests are one of the most annoying insects in the garden, if you let them be anyways. Most of the time, you will not even see them, because it is only when populations explode that we see pests at all. And aphids can […]

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What are Nativars and are They Better?

What are Nativars and are They Better?

I have had very heated discussions over the use of nativars with my purest friends in the native plant community. They prefer to use only true from seed native plants in their gardens, but I think selected varieties can be combined with true natives. It is worth digging into. So, what are nativars? Nativar is […]

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Year in Review – Insects of 2019

Year in Review – Insects of 2019

Although 2019 is not quite over yet, with the early snow and extreme temperature changes, the majority of insects have begun their hibernation periods and so we can discuss this year’s populations. With the advent of extremely wet weather ( over 70 inches of rain in Northeast Kansas) we have seen a population explosion in […]

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Nurse Trees

Nurse Trees

What are nurse trees?  Nurse trees are fallen trees and branches that support wildlife through their own degradation and breakdown. If left as is in the forest, nurse logs or trees continually support a large variety of wildlife for many years and eventually recycle all their nutrients back into the forest ecosystem. The breakdown process […]

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