All the Dirt on Gardening

The attitudes toward prairie plants has been changing gradually over the past decade. When settlers arrived in the midwest a century ago, they removed wild plants and grasses in order to put in crops, thereby eliminating prairie. Now there is recognition that it is a mistake to shun prairie plants and many farmers are putting patches of prairie back into their farming plans. Research at Iowa State University points to the prairie plants' deep-roots that soak up polluting waste water, filter it and enrich the soil. In an interview with the Washington Post , prairie guru,    Lisa Schulte Moore, said, " “The reason why we have the best soil, making it possible to have the world’s best food production, is prairie." The article says, " Now Schulte Moore and a team of 50 researchers are pushing for a resurrection and spreading a message: Wild prairie could help the state’s agriculture industry. It could slow soil erosion that costs farmers more than a billion dol...

Here are a few of the hundreds of ecology and conservation  blogs on the Internet. I can get lost for hours just clicking on their lists of favorite blogs. Enjoy browsing - these are just the ones I liked the best. If you have an ecology blog or a favorite one you browse or subscribe to, please let me/us know its web address. We can never read enough! - Th e Prairie Ecologist - http://prairieecologist.com/ Located between Grand Island and Kearney, Nebraska, The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies are a chain of grasslands and wetlands that are managed for biological diversity with a combination of prescribed fire and grazing. These prairies are also working laboratories for the development of innovative techniques for grassland management that restore and/or maintain the diversity of life found in high quality grasslands. Most importantly, they are full of life, including birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, invertebrates, and plants. Enjoy the following slide s...