County Agent News
Dan Folske
March 7, 2022
Coming Events
– March 16. Northwest Landowners Information Expo, Bismarck
– March 22, Soil Health Café Talk, Hygge Hills, 9-11 am
Northwest Landowners Information Expo
The Northwest Landowners Association has put together a great educational program for landowners and the general public to learn more about pipelines, reclamation, energy development, and pore space litigation.
“Pore space litigation, what’s that?” You’ve heard about government oil reserves stored in caverns and maybe about plans to store CO2 and natural gas underground. This litigation is about who owns and controls the underground geology and voids, large and small, in that geography. There is a great deal of controversy about what pore space is and who controls it, surface owners, mineral owners or mineral development lease holders.
This event is a great opportunity to learn more about a wide variety of issues at the Ramkota Hotel in Bismarck, 8:30 am, March 16th. The event is open to members and nonmembers. Check out https://nwlandowners.com/ for more information.
Ready For Spring?
Are you a gardener or someone who wants to try a garden? I’ve been getting garden seed catalogs for a couple of months already, seeing ads online for garden seed and now the vegetable and flower garden seed racks are out in many stores. Actual planting in the garden is quite aways off but it may soon be time to start the first pants indoors. Never tried that? It’s easy and you don’t need to invest in special grow lights. I use four foot long shop or utility lights. I still have a couple of them with fluorescent bulbs but the newer LED lights are better. You can get special ones which are supposed to have a slighltly better light spectrum for plants but standard ones work very well.
Don’t know what varieties to buy? NDSU Extension Horticulturist Tom Kalb has led the North Dakota Home Garden Variety Trials since 2008. You can access the results of these trials at https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/homegardenvarietytrials
You can even participate! Here is more information about the project:
North Dakota State University (NDSU) is working with gardeners across the state to evaluate promising vegetable, herb and flower varieties. Gardeners share the results of their research to develop a list of recommended varieties for the state.
Who can participate?
All gardeners are welcome to participate. This includes young and old, experts and beginners, commercial growers and backyard gardeners. Over 200 families participate in these trials every year. We focus our work with North Dakotans, but will work with gardeners of adjacent states/provinces who live near North Dakota.
Selecting trials
Households may select up to seven trials. Each trial is a comparison of two varieties. Seed packets contain enough seeds to plant a 10-foot row of each variety. Thus, if you would choose to participate in a red radish trial, you would receive enough seeds to plant two 10-foot rows of red radishes.
Our agreement
This project is a research program, not a seed store. Gardeners must agree to manage their seeds in a responsible manner. They must sow, grow, harvest, and taste the vegetables. Gardeners must report their results to NDSU. Reports should be submitted after the first hard frost in fall.
Is it hard to evaluate varieties?
Laying out the plots is easy. You will receive planting instructions along with your seeds, row markers, and evaluation forms with your order.
We use 10 feet as our guide to get a fair look at a variety. Persons with small gardens or container gardens may participate, but please allow for a fair look of each variety.
NDSU is not looking for complicated data. For each trial, we wish to know which of the two varieties germinated best, was most healthy, produced higher yields, and produced the best tasting vegetables (or best looking flowers). We wish to know which of the two varieties you prefer and which (if any) you recommend to other gardeners in North Dakota. Click here to see a completed evaluation form.
What will we do with the results?
Upon receiving the results of gardeners (typically soon after the frost), NDSU will compile the results and send a final report summary to all gardeners. Summaries and full reports are available in our results page of the Home Garden Variety Trials web site.
The results will be used to develop recommendations of vegetable cultivars for gardeners in North Dakota and distributed via NDSU publications and broadcasts.