Cherry Glen Learning Farm

10/02/2023

Cherry Glen Learning Farm is funded by Watershed Mitigation Farm

11/04/2022

Chinese students cook authentic foods.

09/13/2022

County Supervisor visits Watershed Mitigation Farm

08/09/2022

Finally, we have some good news about Japanese beetles!

A natural predator of the Japanese beetle — known as the winsome fly — is starting to kill Japanese beetles in Minnesota and at the Arboretum, says the Arb’s Integrated Pest Management Specialist, Erin Buchholz.

This parasitoid fly lays its eggs on the beetles. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow inside the Japanese beetle, causing it to lose ability to function, so that it will die in a matter of days, even before it lays eggs for its next generation.

As you can see in this photo (taken of beetles sampled at the Arboretum), the eggs are laid in instances of one or more on the beetles’ backs on the thorax area near their heads.

Since this is a fly you definitely want in your garden, letting beetles like this live might be worth any damage they cause. It may also be yet another reason to avoid traps and blankets of insecticides.

Learn more at tinyurl.com/winsome-fly

05/17/2022

Louis Masai is a London-based painter, sculptor and muralist.

He uses his art in the form of murals, paintings and installations as a way to highlight the 6th mass extinction, climate change and species equality

An artist determined to raise awareness of the plight of bees and their importance to our survival on Earth 🐝

Art by Louis Masai

🐝



🌿Environmental Conservation 🌿

🐝 🙏🏻🐝

👉🏻Here's actions you can take to help and bee engaged in their protection:

🌿Plant pollinator-friendly plants in your garden, terraces or balconies

🌿Avoid using pesticides

🌿Offer a habitat to pollinators by installing an insect hotel

🌿Make a bee bath

🌿Buy organic and local food

🌿Look after parks and green spaces

🌿The conservation of indigenous bee species and local diversity is important to the long-term viability of bee species 🐝🌿



🌿🐝🐝🌱🙏🏻🐝🐝🌿

05/12/2022

05/12/2022

“If you think the world is a scary place and we are just surviving from one crisis to the next, wait until there is no one to grow your food.

People haven't consistently hunted, gathered, or grown their own supply of food 24/7/365 for over a hundred years now. Farmers and ranchers are getting burned out, dried out, priced out, undervalued, underpaid, and underappreciated.

Time to wake up friends, before there is no one left to grow your food. Start in your backyard and teach a young person, buy from your local farmers market, support your local rancher or we will all wake up one day with our food made in a lab and grown in a petri dish.”

~Josh Mansfield Ridgetop Farms

06/24/2021

We are helping Woodward Granger set up raised bed gardens on school campus. At our Watershed Mitigation Farm we have free water for our gardens and agroforestry. Our NRCS designed farm captures surface runoff and intercept farm tile, and put those nutrients to use on our farm. We provide a slow & clean downstream discharge, helping to resotore the Gulf Coast aquatic food production.

06/15/2021

05/03/2021

Nichole Gent ISU Masters Agriculture Education
is recipient of 2021 Teacher of the Year by Izaak Walton League of America; for her collaboration with Ankeny School District STEM/ORBIS program [ Seed Saving Seed Sharing Library]. Students learned that you need a healthy soil to product nutrient dense table foods. We can improve soil health and water quality with good site management by implementing NRCS designed conservation practices to keep the soil in place. Iowa Veterans in Agriculture members worked with this project also.

02/22/2021

Ankeny School District STEM/ORBIS students meet at the Watershed Mitigation Farm learning center to begin creating their SEED SAVING SEED SHARING LIBRARY project. Students have formed three groups to build a collaborative network. The goal is to increase biodiversity; establish seed sovereignty , and improve food security.

02/14/2021

Potato plants are growing pretty quickly.
We have starter plants in trays on shelving, that can be rolled out into the green house late morning.

02/11/2021

We are collaborating with Ankeny School District STEM/ORBIS students, to start a Seed Saving Seed Sharing Library. We provided plants to over winter and collect seed from. Here we are testing germination of tubs of potato's . Farming with more crop rotation and more plant biodiversity increases the resilience of crop production and helps build a more healthy soil.