Replacing your ash trees in spring?

Image of ash guidePlanning what you’d like to do in the coming year on your land? If the emerald ash borer has wiped out your ash trees, you can see your best choices for replacing them — whether in town or country — in a CFAES-published bulletin. And to boot, it’s now being offered at a sale price.

Sept. 9 workshop on spotting, managing invasive tree pests

Got problems with emerald ash borers, gypsy moths or other invaders in your woods? Or just want to be ready in case they arrive? CFAES’s Ohio Woodland Stewards Program is giving a Sept. 9 workshop on spotting and managing non-native invasive tree pests. Get details here and here. Register here.

A rose is a rose is sometimes a noxious weed that’s extremely difficult to eradicate

Image of multiflora roseIt’s a tough row to hoe trying to get rid of multiflora rose. It can almost be hand-to-hand combat. Or, at least, hand to thorn. Fortunately, CFAES has tips that can help you. Read Multiflora Rose Control, which you can get from our online bookstore. (Photo by Fredlyfish4 licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

Ohio’s worst woodland invaders and how to stop them: May 20

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACFAES’s Kathy Smith and Marne Titchenell want to give honeysuckle the boot. Along with garlic mustard, autumn olive, buckthorn and many others. They’ll show how to do it in a workshop in northeast Ohio. Continue reading Ohio’s worst woodland invaders and how to stop them: May 20

1 day, 9 ways to manage what lives on your land even better

Conference on woods and wildlife 2A Nov. 14 workshop near Toledo aims to help landowners better understand and manage their natural resources, from trees to bees to ponds to wildlife. Continue reading 1 day, 9 ways to manage what lives on your land even better

Invasive species may be junk food for predators; or, why not gobble gobies?

RoundGoby2If there’s an upshot to the appearance of invasive species, it’s that they might provide an additional food source for the native animals whose territory they are invading.

But a new analysis of scientific studies spanning more than two decades has revealed that predators benefit most from eating invasive prey only if their traditional food sources remain intact — that is, if they are able to maintain their usual diet and eat invaders only as an occasional snack. Continue reading Invasive species may be junk food for predators; or, why not gobble gobies?

Purdue prof to speak on new walnut disease

Matt Ginzel, head of Purdue University’s Forest Entomology Laboratory, presents “Thousand Cankers Disease: Enhanced Detection of the Insect Vector and Etiology of the Disease within the Native Range of Black Walnut” from 3:30-4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at CFAES’s research arm, OARDC in Wooster (121 Fisher Auditorium), and by video link to Ohio State’s Columbus campus (244 Kottman Hall). Thousand cankers is a new, deadly fungal disease of walnut trees. The insect that carries the disease, the walnut twig beetle, has been found in Ohio in Butler County. Read a good CFAES backgrounder here.

Pitching a stink (bug)

This has to do with sustainability in the sense of sustaining a stink bug- and stink-free household. Which is nice. CFAES’s Ohioline website has a helpful free fact sheet about brown marmorated stink bugs, where they come from, what they do and how to control them. You can download it here. And our entomology friends at Virginia Tech have a short, clear video (only 24 seconds) showing how to build your own research-tested, effective, inexpensive stink bug trap that you can watch above or here. Brown marmorated stink bugs move into homes in fall, looking for a place to spend winter. They’re a non-native invasive species in the U.S. and are a pest, too, of fruit and vegetables.