On tap for today, Friday, April 10, in Agriculture and Natural Resources Madness: A Tournament of Education are “Making Your Events, Festivals, and Agritourism Accessible to the Public” at 9 a.m., “Assistive Technology to Keep You Farming” at noon, and “Farming and Gardening with Arthritis and Other Physical Limitations” at 3 p.m.
Find details about the series here and here. Scroll down to April 10 at the second link and you’ll find links for watching today’s sessions by Zoom.
If you’re thinking about planting a vegetable garden, whether during the coronavirus shutdown or any other time, but are challenged by a physical disability, check out an upcoming webinar from CFAES called “Gardening With Physical Limitations.” The program will offer tips and strategies. It’s from 11 a.m. to noon on Thursday, April 9. Registration is free, open to everyone, but is limited to the first 500 people.
A free CFAES fact sheet gives suggestions for shoring up family finances, eating cheaply but well, and running a household efficiently—tips that can help all of us as we work our way through the coronavirus shutdown. Check it out. (Photo: Getty Images.)
File this one under “sustainability of human health.” CFAES’ Sanja Ilic and Tracy Turner answer the question, “Can your food get contaminated with coronavirus?”
New research by Kerry Ard, a CFAES environmental sociologist, shows that despite an overall improvement in American air quality over the past 70 years, air pollution remains a serious health problem in low-income communities, especially communities of color. Read the story.
A new CFAES task force is offering help to farmers and their families dealing with the emotional impacts of Ohio’s farming crisis.
Interested in growing your own greens? Early spring is a good time to start. Lettuce can tolerate cool soil and weather, writes Master Gardener Volunteer Faye Mahaffey in a piece published by OSU Extension’s Brown County office, “so you can plant seeds in a well-prepared seedbed as much as 4 weeks before your last frost date.”
Further, if you have limited space or mobility, you can easily grow lettuce in pots, compact salad boxes, and raised salad tables, too.
Ohio’s last frost date ranges from the first week of May to the first week of June, depending on where you live. See when yours is.
Learn more about CFAES’s Master Gardener Volunteer program. (Photo: Getty Images.)
The Environmental Professionals Network (EPN) presents its next public breakfast program, “Healthy Planet, Healthy Patients: Hospitals Reduce Their Environmental Footprint” from 7:15-9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16, in the Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Building on Ohio State’s Columbus campus. Registration is $10, free for students, and includes breakfast. Find out more and register.
EPN, a statewide professional group, is a service of CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources.
What’s being done to keep you safe from Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms? Hear from some of the people doing the work in the video above. It’s new from Ohio Sea Grant.
“We’re taking advantage of something plants have been doing for millions of years” — evolving chemicals to defend themselves from pests — “to hopefully get a leg up on mosquitoes.”
So says CFAES scientist Pete Piermarini, pictured, explaining a recent study. In it, he and scientist Liva Rakotondraibe of Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy discovered a possible new mosquito-fighting chemical in a plant from Madagascar.
Read the full story. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)