(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2007-10-05, 15:14:00

"Did you ever take a good look at yourself in the mirror?"
"No. Why should I hurt my own feelings?"
- Abbott and Costello

Once upon a time, I was employed as a human shield. My job was to protect pampered faculty from the slings and arrows of the outrageous bureaucracy of a large and prestigious university. I was good at it, although it was a lasting disappointment to me that the tenured have about as much respect for mere staff members as a street-sweeper has for a gum wrapper.

Thinking about that today was like a post-traumatic stress flashback. It’s odd that I would recall those stressful days, but for one serendipitous observation that triggered the memory of faculty disrespect for anything other than their own field of expertise. What happened was: I caught the laughing man rock looking up at me from his lowly spot in a dish garden. I think he’s wise to the real order of the universe, and he’s certainly “grounded.“

I recalled the day I bought that stone at a nursery years ago, back when I was still working for a living. I bought him one weekend because I had had a particularly stressful week, and seeing him looking up at me from a display on the counter, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t up to the idiots I worked with to determine who I was. That was up to me. Imagine learning that lesson from a small stone.

It still is up to me to decide my value in the universe. Thanks for the review of that lesson, laughing rock man.

(Via EnjoyGardening)

Posted by admin to Current Articles on 2007-10-05, 07:14:35

first published September 27, 2007

One thing I’ve learned over the years in the garden centre business is that the field of horticulture has some interesting parallels to the field of medicine—the most obvious one being that garden centres are, in some respects, comparable to walk-in clinics—places where plants can be taken to have their ailments accurately diagnosed and remedied.

A second similarity between the two fields is that the depth of information on the cause and treatment for a particular ailment is driven, to a great extent, by the magnitude of the problem. Big problems, be they with people or plants, tend to draw big research dollars, and if a large enough demographic of consumers demands answers and are willing to dig deep into their pockets for treatments, then researchers will be nipping at heals to provide those answers (just think aging boomers and tiny blue pills).

A Tale of Two Pests
To illustrate the horticultural point, let’s look at two insect pests: whiteflies (a very common horticultural pest) and oak bulletgall wasp (a relatively rare pest and one that I wrote about a few weeks ago). Whitefly is a very serious and potentially devastating pest of many field-grown crops worldwide—and one that’s adapted well to the relatively safe and cozy environment of greenhouses. Naturally, since there’s a sizeable profit to be made from controlling this pest, dollars seem to have a knack of fluttering their way toward whitefly research…and flutter, and flutter some more. In my horticultural library alone, I would guess that I have 400 or 500 pages of information on whitefly—everything from behavior to biological and chemical controls—all of which I count on to keep my crops healthy and my bills paid.

Now contrast the bloated biographies on whitefly with what has been published about bur oak-eating bulletgall wasp. Since it attacks bur oak, which are still relatively obscure trees on much of the prairies, the words research dollars and bulletgall wasps are rarely used in the same sentence. When I wrote about it earlier this month, I had precisely half a page of entomological information on the wasp and only limited personal experience to go on. Now, that might not seem like a big deal if you don’t have a bur oak, but imagine how frustrating it would be if you had a beautiful 100-year-old oak growing in your yard; then you might be thankful for any information you could get your hands on. I don’t expect that the research process will change any time soon, but the good news, at least in the case of the bulletgall wasp, is that there are people who work around the difficulties.

From Out of the Woodwork
Shortly after the bulletgall wasp article was published, I received an e-mail and phone call from Scott Digweed, a former student from the U of A who has a master’s degree in entomology. It seems that for the past four years or so, Scott has taken it upon himself to study the bulletgall wasp, partly because he realized that information was severely lacking and partly because he just found the wasp fascinating. When I asked Scott where he received his funding for the research, he simply stated, “my wife,” which I have interpreted to mean she provided him with sandwiches and tolerated his dissected galls on the kitchen table.

Thanks to people like Scott, who study obscure little insects like the bulletgall wasp in their spare time and then selflessly share the knowledge with the rest of us, we gain what I think is one heck of a bargain in understanding one of our garden insect pests. And as Scott pointed out, he is but one of many amateur and professional researchers who investigate the world around us purely for the love of learning. Good or bad, profit-driven research will always be the dominant type of research in our world, but it sure is nice to know that there is a place for research undertaken just for sake of human edification…if not for the sandwiches.