The Week at Merry Lea

From Meg...

The weather was great this week with a short break from the humidity and heat. Everything in the garden is growing along nicely, and it's the time of the summer were it feels like the tomatoes need to be tied-up every-other day .

This week we spent time mulching with hay in the kitchen garden to prevent weeds from growing and moister loss. We also worked with the compost to get some new bins going and rotted hay bales out.

It was a week of pests: weeds, diseases and arthropods to be specific. We heard lectures from Dale and Dr. David Miller on pest management rather than pest control. On Tuesday we looked at the specimens we collected with our bug taps, comparing insect life found on a bare plot, mulched plot, and plot with a cover crop. We examined lots of mites, ants, springtails and even a few centipedes and pill bugs.

Mid-week we took a trip up to Michigan State's Kellogg Biological Station. There we got a tour from Dr. Doug Landis of their fields planted to research bio-fuels. With test plots for corn, switchgrass, prairie, miscanthus, and many others they monitor everything from insects to carbon emissions on these possible bio fuels of the future.

We finished out the week with bird banding on Thursday morning and a soils lab and lecture Friday. While bird banding we got to help Lisa Zinn in the banding of a few catbirds, an indigo bunting, and a bluebird. Friday we tried out both new and old tools for determining slope and the effects of erosion in agriculture.

Thank you to everyone who made it a great week to be an agroecology student at Merry Lea!

To learn more about the Agroecology Summer Intensive, visit the Merry Lea web site.